Re: Unable to connect. Log : PDTWARNING: worker took too long to start; canceled

Thanks for the response - and explanation of those emails. I was somewhat
surprised that there were no further discussions of that issue in the
archives and that it would be left hanging like that. And then further
confused by the receipt of those old emails!

I have killed and restarted postgres, so I will have to wait a day, I
suppose, to see if it hangs again.

I was no where near the connection limit, however, so it wasn't that. And
I didn't have all those dead postmaster processes.

Interestingly (maybe), when I did a ps when it was hung, there was NO
postmaster process, just a postgres process.

I believe when I restarted yesterday, I used the pg_ctl start command.

Today I used the OSX launchctl start command (what would happen at reboot),
and now I DO see a postmaster process.

642 72833 1 0 9:34AM ?? 0:00.23
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
642 72837 72833 0 9:34AM ?? 0:00.10 postgres: logger process

642 72839 72833 0 9:34AM ?? 0:00.43 postgres: writer process

642 72840 72833 0 9:34AM ?? 0:00.31 postgres: wal writer
process
642 72841 72833 0 9:34AM ?? 0:00.11 postgres: autovacuum
launcher process
642 72842 72833 0 9:34AM ?? 0:00.17 postgres: stats collector
process
642 72860 72833 0 9:35AM ?? 0:00.18 postgres: postgres
postgres ::1(54138) idle
642 72861 72833 0 9:35AM ?? 0:00.06 postgres: postgres test
::1(54139) idle

I have also temporarily disabled the glassfish thread pool that was
connecting to the database.

I will continue to try to isolate a (possible) cause.

thanks for your help,
Linus

On Wed, Oct 23, 2013 at 10:37 AM, Alvaro Herrera
<alvherre(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com>wrote:

> Linus Kamb escribió:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Every morning for the past several days, when I come in to work, I find
> the
> > postgres process running at 100% CPU and the logs filled with entries
> every
> > minute with the warning "PDTWARNING: worker took too long to start;
> > canceled"
> >
> > This appears to be almost exactly as this other thread:
> >
> >
> http://www.postgresql.org/message-id/AANLkTimt7_wbadtOkM9HqzeHmADmxb2TvuQD5yBUwkdZ@mail.gmail.com
>
> I noticed that the thread was missing a couple of emails in the
> archives, and that I had them in my mbox. I have just forwarded them
> ("bounced" them in mutt's terms) to the list and I think the archive is
> complete now for that thread; I apologize to subscribers that just
> received a couple of very old emails.
>
> Anyway, that thread died without finding the root cause of the problem,
> but Tom suspected that postmaster was being kept busy doing something
> that precluded it from running its usual tasks. For the OP of the other
> thread, stracing the postmaster seemed to bring it back to normal life.
>
> Would it be possible to attach to the postmaster with GDB and get a
> stack trace when it's stuck? That might be helpful; or, if the mere act
> of tracing it brings it back to life, it might not -- but instead it
> would make me think it's a platform bug of some sort.
>
> If you remove the Glassfish thing, does the problem go away?
>
> (Note: the PDTWARNING thing happens because you don't have a white space
> at the end of your log_line_prefix. Adding one does wonders for
> readability.)
>
> --
> Álvaro Herrera http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
> PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training & Services
>