Re: Re: [SQL] PostgreSQL crashes on me :(

Ian Lance Taylor <ian@airs.com> writes:
>    Any thoughts on a cleaner solution?

> One way to avoid this race condition is to set a timeout on the
> select.  What is the maximum acceptable time for a timely response?

I thought about that, but it doesn't seem like a cleaner solution.
Basically you'd have to figure a tradeoff between wasted cycles in
the postmaster and time delay to respond to a crashed backend.
And there's no good tradeoff there.  If you have a backend crash,
you want to shut down the other backends ASAP, before they have a
chance to propagate any shared-memory corruption that the failed
backend might've created.  The entire exercise is probably pointless
if the postmaster twiddles its thumbs for awhile before killing the
other backends.
        regards, tom lane