Re: Don't' Understand the Processes Listing Associated with Postgres

Wang, Mary Y wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm looking at all the processes from 'ps' that are related to Postgres. How come there is a process associated with a different date? Are those processes to be expected? Should I be concerned? I'm running on Postgres 8.3.8. The database is working and running.
>
> Here is the list:
> 1 S postgres 13599 13596 0 75 0 - 9003 schedu May06 ? 00:17:25 postgres: writer process
> 1 S postgres 13600 13596 0 75 0 - 8971 schedu May06 ? 00:10:57 postgres: wal writer process
> 1 S postgres 13601 13596 0 75 0 - 9038 schedu May06 ? 00:04:04 postgres: autovacuum launcher process
> 1 S postgres 13602 13596 0 75 0 - 1873 schedu May06 ? 00:04:16 postgres: stats collector process
> 1 S postgres 11416 13596 0 75 0 - 9434 schedu May25 ? 00:00:13 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(35333) idle
> 1 S postgres 7462 13596 0 75 0 - 9404 schedu May26 ? 00:00:14 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(35465) idle
> 1 S postgres 7464 13596 0 75 0 - 9455 schedu May26 ? 00:00:23 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(35466) idle
> 1 S postgres 7107 13596 0 75 0 - 9424 schedu May27 ? 00:00:05 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(35801) idle
> 1 S postgres 7108 13596 0 75 0 - 9431 schedu May27 ? 00:00:19 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(35802) idle
> 1 S postgres 16224 13596 0 75 0 - 9438 schedu May28 ? 00:00:07 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(36292) idle
> 1 S postgres 16234 13596 0 75 0 - 9445 schedu May28 ? 00:00:12 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(36293) idle
> 1 S postgres 18301 13596 0 75 0 - 9448 schedu May29 ? 00:00:04 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(36676) idle
> 1 S postgres 17034 13596 0 75 0 - 9442 schedu May30 ? 00:00:09 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(37498) idle
> 1 S postgres 21184 13596 0 75 0 - 9392 schedu Jun01 ? 00:00:01 postgres: postgres marydatabase 127.0.0.1(38322) idle
>

the first 4 listed there are utility processes that are always running,
they are created when postgres is started.

the remaining processes are all idle connections to the database
"marydatabase" from localhost.... chances are pretty good if you did a
`lsof -i -n` and dig through the output for lines like...

httpd 12552 apache 45u IPv4 672293691 TCP
127.0.0.1:35333->127.0.0.1:5432 (ESTABLISHED)

you could identify the connecting processes (in this made up case,
apache httpd PID 12552 is connected to your postgres process 11416)

offhand, it appears something is connecting to your database a couple
times a day and persisting for like a week.