Re: Any advice on debugging hanging postgresql-8.1.21 (many postmaster's)

On 4/10/2010 5:20 PM, Alexander Farber wrote:

> # rpm -qa | grep -i postgres
> postgresql-8.1.21-1.el5_5.1

Mmm, elderly.

> On Friday I've installed a cronjob (full source code at the bottom):
>
> 3       3       *       *       *       psql -a -f
> $HOME/bin/clean-phpbb-forum.sql

Do you rate-control it or provide any sort of interlocking so that you
don't land up with multiple copies running at once?

See "man 2 flock" for a convenient way to do that reliably from the shell.

> My biggest problem is, that I don't see any information
> from Postgres at the production site - why did it have to start
> so many postmaster's (whatever those processes do).

http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/FAQ#Why_does_PostgreSQL_have_so_many_processes.2C_even_when_idle.3F

As for what they're doing: see pg_stat_activity.

--
Craig Ringer

Tech-related writing at http://soapyfrogs.blogspot.com/