On Unix, it is possible to tell whether your parent process has died
by checking to see if you have become a child of init:
if (getppid() == 1)
/* oh dear, I am an orphan */
Is there equivalent functionality available on Windows?
Currently, we have the pgstat child process checking for postmaster
death by watching for read-ready on a pipe. This does not scale
pleasantly to multiple long-lived postmaster children, though, so
I'm wondering about ways for the children to detect a postmaster crash
without requiring any direct postmaster cooperation.
regards, tom lane