"Markus Wollny" <Markus.Wollny@computec.de> writes:
> http://postgresql.linux.cz/mhonarc/pgsql-ports/1999-01/msg00001.html
> Has the mentioned bug report been adressed since then?
I don't think it's a bug. TCP is not designed to detect connection
failure instantly, and it's definitely not designed to waste network
resources when neither side of a connection is sending anything.
In the scenario described in the report, the backend is sitting idle
and there's no way to know that the client side thinks the connection
has failed.
In recent releases we set the keepalive feature on, which means that
after a sufficiently long timeout the server side will probe to see
if the client is still there, and will then discover that the
connection is dead. Whereupon the backend will receive a kernel
error report and will exit. But up to that moment, there's no reason
to think that anything is wrong.
regards, tom lane