Re: Minor race-condition problem during database startup

Zdenek Kotala  writes:
> Zdenek Kotala napsal(a):
>> By my opinion there is not reason to retry kill call, because it fails 
>> only in situation if process does not exist or caller does not have 
>> permission to send a signal.

> If I think more about it, that code is here because it probably tries to bypass 
> time when bgwriter is restarted.

Correct.  Did you read the commit log message?
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-committers/2008-11/msg00269.php

The bgwriter-exit case is currently treated as a crash and I'm not
immediately proposing to change that, but this code or something close
to it will be needed if we ever do want to recover from bgwriter exit
nicely.
		regards, tom lane