Re: why not kill -9 postmaster

On 10/20/06, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> writes:
> > Shane Ambler wrote:
> >> The one thing worse than kill -9 the postmaster is pulling the power
> >> cord out of the server. Which is what makes UPS's so good.
> >>
> >> If your server is changing the data file on disk and you pull the power
> >> cord, what chance do you expect of reading that data file again?
>
> > 1. That's what we have WAL for. The only thing that can really kill
> > you is the use of non-battery-backed write cache.
>
> The important distinction here is "will you lose data" vs "can you start
> a new server without tedious manual intervention" (ipcrm etc). kill -9
> won't lose data, but you may have to clean up after it. And, as Andreas
> already noted, some people have been seen to mess up the manual
> intervention part badly enough to cause data loss by themselves.
> Personally I think the TIP that's really needed is "never remove
> postmaster.pid by hand".
>

When the machine crashes, don't you have to remove the pid file by
hand to get the Postgres to start? I seem to remember having to do
that....

- Ian Never-Say-Never Harding