I've had this problem a number of times. Before I tell you what I did to
solve this problem, let me warn you that I am a novice at DBs (PostgreSQL is
my first database).
In my experience, the problem seems to be caused by a lot of data being put
into the database. We are using the database to ingest real-time data 24
hours a day/7 days a week. The data comes in about every three minutes.
While I was not able to identify what the exact cause has been, I have
noticed that before the problem becomes critical (before the backend
terminates abnormally), the (number of) indexes do not correspond to the
actual table. That leads me to believe that the indexes do not get created
on all occasions. After some time, the table's internal indexes may be come
corrupted, and vacuuming does no good.
When trying to fix this, I first delete the index, then recreate it., then
vacuum. If that doesn't work, then I drop the table, create the index,
reload the data, and then vacuum the table.
I would be curious to see if anyone else has had this type of problem and
what their solutions were.
I can provide the scripts to check the database to the newsgroup or to you
directly, if desired.
David
-----Original Message-----
From: Sferacarta Software <sferac@bo.nettuno.it>
To: pgsql-general@postgreSQL.org <pgsql-general@postgreSQL.org>
Date: Friday, August 21, 1998 10:57 AM
Subject: [GENERAL] DELETE statement KILL backend <AGAIN>
>
> Hello all,
>
> I have a strange problem that I can't understand.
> I have been my PostgreSQL-6.3.2 on Linux-ELF-2.0.34 working without any
problem for many
> months. This morning I can't DELETE anymore.
> If I try to delete a row from any table I have this message:
>
> PGexec() -- Request has sent to backend, but backend closed the
> channel before responding.
> This probably means the backend terminated abnormally before or while
> processing the request.
>
> and then the backend dies.
>
> I tried every statement as:
> INSERT
> UPDATE
> SELECT
> DROP TABLE
> and all of them works but DELETE,
>
> I tried also VACUUM without success.
>
> PLEASE help me !!
>
> Best regards,
> Jose' mailto:sferac@bo.nettuno.it
>
>
>