Re: crash help, pgsql 7.2.1 on RH7.3

"Tim Lynch" <admin+pgsqladmin(at)thirdage(dot)com> writes:
> running pgsql 7.2.1 on redhat7.3 SMP. installed a hacked glibc to fix the
> mktime() timezone problem for dates < 1970
> (http://rpms.arvin.dk/glibc/rh73/i686/)

> three times now the backend process has unexpectedly quit. what happens is
> the postmaster process and the stats processes disappear and only the client
> connection processes remain.

Really!? That would seem to indicate a postmaster crash. (The stats
processes are designed to quit automatically when the parent postmaster
exits, so it's no surprise they'd exit too.) This is highly unusual,
and worth looking into more closely.

> i don't see a core file.

Check that you are starting the postmaster with "ulimit -c unlimited";
this is not the default on most Linuxen, so you may have to add that to
the start script. Also note that the postmaster never does a chdir,
so if it drops core it will be in the same directory the start script
was running in.

> now that 7.2.3 is out and fixes the mktime() problem i should probably
> upgrade to that and revert to stock redhat glibc stuff.

Probably. But I do not think the postmaster ever calls mktime(), so the
odds are that your glibc hack is unrelated.

regards, tom lane