Re: pg_ctl inappropriately timing out?

Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@surnet.cl> writes:
> On Tue, Jun 07, 2005 at 04:16:49PM -0700, Josh Berkus wrote:
>> When you call pg_ctl --stop, the WAL is still writing out to the database
>> and postmaster won't shut down until it's done, which can take a couple
>> minutes.

> Is there any way for pg_ctl to detect a "server is shutting down"
> message?  Not sure what it'd do with it though ...

It strikes me that the server shouldn't ever get a couple minutes behind
on writing dirty buffers; this seems more like a bgwriter configuration
issue than pg_ctl's fault.  Consider that in a standard Unix
configuration you will get about 20 seconds between SIGTERM and SIGKILL
when init wants to shut you down ...

            regards, tom lane