Re: postgres processes not reflected in pg_stat_activity

Hi -
Thanks for the response.
I'm on solaris so the ps ax doesn't work for me. I think the equivalent
is ps -ef which shows:
postgres 6939 22678 0 15:49:49 ? 1:33
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22678 16072 0 Aug 06 ? 5:22
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 5074 22678 0 Aug 12 ? 710:08
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 8677 22678 0 Aug 13 ? 894:39
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 8347 22678 0 Aug 25 ? 357:27
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 343 22678 0 Aug 13 ? 368:30
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 8678 22678 0 Aug 13 ? 695:15
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 24793 22678 0 Aug 12 ? 2048:13
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22690 22678 0 Aug 06 ? 106:15
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22686 22678 0 Aug 06 ? 3:09
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22691 22678 0 Aug 06 ? 1145:42
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 350 22678 0 Aug 13 ? 262:39
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 16593 22678 0 Aug 12 ? 731:57
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22688 22678 0 Aug 06 ? 104:59
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2

If I'm wrong about the ps commands, please correct me.
When I cross reference this against pg_stat_activity, 5 of them don't
show up, and a top shows the same processes using 0% cpu but almost a
gig of memory. Are these internal postgres processes that don't make a
connection?
Mija

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Marlowe [mailto:scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com]
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 7:54 PM
To: Lee, Mija
Cc: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] postgres processes not reflected in
pg_stat_activity

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Lee, Mija<mija(at)scharp(dot)org> wrote:
> Hello:
> I have a server that has many more postgres processes (postgres -D
> <datadir>, owned by postgres, listed with an ps -ef) than connections
in
> pg_stat_activity. How can I find out what those processes are?
> I have been going through the docs and found a reference to if the
> autovacuum launcher should show up in pg_stat_activity, but it looks
> like that was implemented in 8.3.
> I'm running 8.3.5 on solaris 10.
> Thanks so much for the help!
> Mija

What does:
$ ps ax|grep postgres
say?

I get something like this at idle:

312 pts/0 S+ 0:00 /usr/lib/postgresql/8.3/bin/psql
313 ? Ss 0:00 postgres: smarlowe smarlowe [local] idle
2784 ? S 0:01 /usr/lib/postgresql/8.3/bin/postgres -D
/var/lib/postgresql/8.3/main -c
config_file=/etc/postgresql/8.3/main/postgresql.conf
2787 ? Ss 0:03 postgres: writer process
2788 ? Ss 0:02 postgres: wal writer process
2789 ? Ss 0:00 postgres: autovacuum launcher process
2790 ? Ss 0:00 postgres: stats collector process
32621 pts/1 S+ 0:00 grep postgres