Re: PostgreSQL crashes with Qmail-SQL

From: Doug McNaught <doug(at)wireboard(dot)com>
To: Bear Giles <bear(at)coyotesong(dot)com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Stephan Szabo <sszabo(at)megazone23(dot)bigpanda(dot)com>, Michael Devogelaere <michael(at)digibel(dot)be>, Justin Clift <justin(at)postgresql(dot)org>, PostgreSQL Hackers Mailing List <pgsql-hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Re: PostgreSQL crashes with Qmail-SQL
Date: 2002-02-01 18:58:33
Message-ID: m34rl1rpuu.fsf@varsoon.denali.to
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Bear Giles <bear(at)coyotesong(dot)com> writes:

> > Caution: I wasted some time running "benchmarks" that proved only
> > to be exercising how fast the client could fail. qmail-getpw's
> > approach to error handling seems to be (a) don't bother testing for
> > very many error conditions (eg, it coredumps on an empty sqlserver
> > control file), and (b) if it does detect a failure, exiting with a
> > nonzero error code is a sufficient way of reporting it. Error messages
> > are for wimps, apparently.
>
> (b) is part of the qmail strategy - qmail is implemented as a set
> of independent processes with different owners and rights and they
> communicate problems through standard exit codes.
>
> We can agree that it should be more forthcoming with meaningful
> help for people setting up the system, but it can't just write an
> message to STDOUT because its caller has probably already set up
> a pipe to another process - any error message would normally find
> itself inserted into the mail queue!

Gaah. Has djb ever heard of syslog(3)? Or is that too insecure for
him?

-Doug
--
Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.
--T. J. Jackson, 1863

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