On Fri, 24 Jan 2003, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Noah,
>
> > I think my server crashed and then restarted itself. Does anybody know
> > what all this means:
> >
> > 2003-01-24 18:28:06 PANIC: link from
> > /RAID/pgsql/pg_xlog/00000009000000BC to
> > /RAID/pgsql/pg_xlog/00000009000000C4 (initialization of log file 9,
> > segment 196) failed: File exists
> > 2003-01-24 18:28:06 LOG: server process (pid 1574) was terminated by
> > signal 6
> > 2003-01-24 18:28:06 LOG: terminating any other active server processes
> > 2003-01-24 18:28:06 WARNING: Message from PostgreSQL backend:
> > The Postmaster has informed me that some other backend
> > died abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory.
> > I have rolled back the current transaction and am
> > going to terminate your database system connection and exit.
> > Please reconnect to the database system and repeat your query.
>
> This means that somebody KILL -9'd a postgres process or the postmaster, and
> Postgres restarted in order to clear the shared buffers. If the database
> started up again, you are fine.
Actually, it looks like an abort() (signal 6) to me. Probably from the
PANIC listed.
The question is why did it get confused and end up linking to a filename
that already existed?