Re: Incomplete Startup Packet on startup and when pg_maintenance --analyze runs in cron

On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 12:26 AM, John Lister
<john(dot)lister-ps(at)kickstone(dot)com>wrote:

>
>
> The pg_maintenance scripts check the state of the autovacuuum flag in the
> postgres config files. If it is enabled they simply quit and don't do
> anything. Disabling autovacuum causes them to run... So you can leave them
> uncommented...

Why would you want to continue to run a cron job that is:

1) No longer applicable to the current version of software (Postgresql 8.1+)

2) Throwing an error in your logs?

The default behavior should be that this cron job is not active by default
if one is running Postgresql 8.1+

>
>
> Although why it causes the "Incomplete start-up packet" messages is a
> mystery...

Because the Debian and Debian derivative packages (Ubuntu) of
postgresql-common -- which is a required dependency for the main postgresql
package, was not rev'd correctly when the autovaccuum feature was added by
default into Postgresql. The script, pg_maintenance, is no longer
functioning as was intended against the current version. This is a software
bug, and I've filed bug reports in both the Debian and Ubuntu systems.

A version check needs to happen on install of postgresql-common to determine
the correct behavior of pg_maintenance based upon the version of PostgresSQL
(patch exisiting package) or a new package needs to be created for
postgresql 8.1+.

In the meantime, if you are here because you want to know how to get rid of
the 'incomplete start-up packet' message in your postgresql logs (thrown at
the exact same interval as the referenced cron job) are running a derivative
of Debian (not sure if this happens with other distros or OS's) comment out
the cron job.

Unfortunately, the message is still thrown when starting and stopping
postgresql, since the init script in postgresql-common is also running the
pg_maintenance check. Hopefully, a patch will fix. This is something much
more reasonable to live with then a cron job that doesn't work running every
5 hours.

Me, I like to bring up new systems with completely clean logs, and identify,
fix any errors in those logs if running an existing system, and not run cron
jobs that are not needed. ;>

Regards,
Jennifer