Re: pg_ctl.exe deleted on abrupt shutdown of Windows

Hi,

> On 15. Dec, 2020, at 18:37, Ron <ronljohnsonjr(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
> On 12/15/20 11:26 AM, Laurenz Albe wrote:
>> On Tue, 2020-12-15 at 10:00 -0600, Ron wrote:
>>>> After abrupt shutdown of Windows, we are seeing the pg_ctl.exe file getting deleted automatically.
>>> Only pg_ctl.exe gets deleted? Anyway, there's nothing in Postgres that says "delete pg_ctl.exe on startup".
>>> This smells strongly of filesystem corruption which requires a Windows guru.
>> Not that I am one, but this smacks of anti-virus software that mistakenly
>> thinks "pg_ctl.exe" is malware and removes or "isolates" it.
>
> OP mentioned that they checked that AV didn't "delete" the file. Nothing about quarantine, though.

I'm no Windows guru either, but AFAIK, some AV software moves "infected" files some place else, i.e. out of the bin directory. That means, could it be possible that it's "deleted" from the bin directory, but be put somewhere else in a quarantine directory?

A "dir /s" or something like that may help.

And what does "shutdown" mean? Stop of the service, or proper shutdown of Windows, or sudden power-off? Or losing a network drive which the PostgreSQL software resides on and hence killing the running database, or what does "shutdown" mean in this context? What is an "*abrupt* shutdown"?

Just a thought. There's probably not much to speculate on unless there are more details.

Cheers,
Paul