Re: pg_stat_activity's client_addr column contains "::1" but actually comes from elsewhere?

On Nov 16, 2020, at 4:49 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> "Edward J. Sabol" <edwardjsabol(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
>> Hello! I'm trying to track down where some connections are coming from. "select pid,client_addr,client_hostname from pg_stat_activity" shows multiple entries with values with client_addr = "::1". "client_hostname" is blank for all entries, by the way, and unhelpful in this scenario. Also, "state" is "idle" for these entries I'm interested in, in case that matters.
>> ::1 would imply the IPv6 loopback address, so that means the connection is coming from a process on the server, right? But I'm positive there is no process on this server that is connecting to PostgreSQL (other than my psql session).
>
>> So where are they actually coming from and why is PostgreSQL seemingly misreporting them as coming from ::1?
>
> Well, unless the kernel is lying to us, that is where the connection
> came from. Perhaps snooping around with netstat and lsof (if you have
> it) would be helpful.

Thanks for the reply. We figured out. One of our developers was using an ssh tunnel and connecting over that.

Regards,
Ed