Re: [PATCH] Log crashed backend's query (activity string)

On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 4:15 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> On Wed, Sep 7, 2011 at 3:42 PM, Alvaro Herrera
>> <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>>> A mishandled encoding conversion could be problematic, so that needs to
>>> be carefully considered (perhaps just shut off unconditionally).
>
>> It's not really a problem for the postmaster if something just plain
>> old fails.  Where we get into trouble is if it manages to (a) crash,
>> (b) take an excessive amount of time to complete, or (c) screw up the
>> postmaster state in some way we can't recover from.  But if any of
>> those are an issue then, yeah, just shut it off.
>
> Keep in mind that in the postmaster, elog(ERROR) *is* a crash.

Right... but a function that returns -1 to indicate that something
didn't work should be OK, as long as whatever it does is otherwise
extremely boring.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
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