Re: [HACKERS] posmaster failed under high load

I wrote:
> Oleg Bartunov <oleg@sai.msu.su> writes:
>> It's interesting, that process with pid 701 migrates from 
>> (postmaster) to postgres with normal ps output !

> Yes, that's pretty strong evidence in favor of my theory (that these
> processes are just new backends that haven't received a command yet).

Nope, that theory is all wet --- the backend definitely does 
PS_SET_STATUS("idle") before it waits for a query.  Something is
*really* peculiar here, since your backtrace shows that the backend
has reached the point of waiting for client input.  It is not possible
to get there without having done PS_SET_STATUS.  So why does the process
still show up as "(postmaster)" in ps?  Something is flaky about your
system's support of ps status setting, I think.
        regards, tom lane