Re: Server Crash

From: "Scott Marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com>
To: "Hajek, Nick" <Nick(dot)Hajek(at)vishay(dot)com>
Cc: pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: Server Crash
Date: 2008-04-22 15:13:09
Message-ID: dcc563d10804220813m21facfbfx17ab52a0e1de2743@mail.gmail.com
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-admin

On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 8:14 AM, Hajek, Nick <Nick(dot)Hajek(at)vishay(dot)com> wrote:
>
>
> All,
> We experienced a crash of a Postgresql server which from the log appears to
> have began with this entry:
>
> Log: background writer process (PID 3457) was terminated by signal 9

Kill -9 is the "shoot it in the head" signal. It is not generated by
postgresql in normal operation. It can be generated by "pg_ctl -m
immediate stop" . At least I think that's what signal it sends.

Anyway, the most common cause of kill -9s randomly showing up in linux
is the OOM killer.

It's quite possible you're running your machine out of memory / swap
somehow and linux is killing the biggest, fattest process it can find,
which is pgsql.

you might wanna run vmstat 1 to see what's happening during these times.

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-admin by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Ray Stell 2008-04-22 15:17:03 Re: Server Crash
Previous Message Hajek, Nick 2008-04-22 14:14:10 Server Crash