Re: Launching debugger on self on SIGSEGV

On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 12:56 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Gurjeet Singh <singh(dot)gurjeet(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > The attached patch registers a signal handler for SIGSEGV and
> launches
> > GDB in batch mode on its own pid so that the stack leading to the SEGV
> can
> > be dumped in the server logs.
>
> Did you not read the thread last week about how we did not want any such
> thing?
>

Unfortunately, I did not. I'll catch up on it.

> Quite aside from any postgres-specific reasons not to have any added
> delay in the signal-to-database-shutdown path, this patch makes a bunch
> of untenable assumptions about whether or where gdb is installed,
> whether there are usable debug symbols available, whether gdb's output
> will go somewhere useful, etc etc. And on top of all that, it adds *no
> functionality whatsoever* compared to a post-mortem gdb run on the core
> file.
>

I agree that it makes a bunch of assumptions, that's why I proposed that we
make it user configurable parameter, like archive_command, so that users (or
their packagers) can provide the command and all the relevant options.

Regards,
--
Gurjeet Singh
EnterpriseDB Corporation
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company