Apologies for replying to my own post, and resurrecting something from
ages ago, but I though that people may be interested in what had happened.
You may recall that I was seeing a number of processes like this on my
linux PostgreSQL server:
[bash]
\_ postmaster -i -D/var/pgsql/data -N 32 -B 64
\_ [postmaster]
etc...
It was suggested that PHP persistent connections were the cause of this,
but tracking down all of the PHP boxes that used the database server and
updating to the latest version of PHP, as well as configuring PHP to not
use persistent connections, while helping (i.e. reducing the number of
un-named processes), didn't actually solve the problem.
However, Ross Reedstrom hit the nail on the head when he said:
"...if it's linux, those could just be swapped out processes: since the
execution state gets swapped, the kernel only has minimal info about the
process, including the original name."
I finally had the opportunity to take the PostgreSQL server down over
the weekend and dump a considerable amount of extra RAM in the machine,
and the problem has dissapeared entirely.
Let it never be said that a database server can have too much RAM :-)
Thanks for all the help everyone!
Cheers,
--
Andrew Hill
"RAID - Don't believe the hype." -- 2001-09-22