Re: Total crash of my db-server

Henrik, have you tested the memory and drive subsystems on this machine?

All this sounds very much like how an old server of mine was behaving when
I had bad memory.  No database can be expected to perform reliably on
unreliable hardware.

Look for memtest86 if you're on intel hardware.  Look at badblocks on
linux, or whatever OS you're on, for mapping out bad drive blocks.

If your machine is dying with NO ping response, it has serious problems,
and postgresql is just revealing them.

Good luck on troubleshooting this problem.

On Sun, 15 Dec 2002, Henrik Steffen wrote:

>
> Hello all,
>
> sometimes I experience a total crash of my
> db-server while e.g. doing automated maintainance tasks:
>
> At 2:30 am every night the webserver is shut
> down, so there won't be any concurrent accesses to the
> db-server. then there will be done a
> VACUUM FULL
>
> This is what happened tonight while fully vacuuming:
>
> server closed the connection unexpectedly
> This probably means the server terminated abnormally
> before or while processing the request.
>
> Then, the script selects all user tables and starts
> reindexing them. Tonight, reindexeing the first table
> started and seconds later the whole server crashed.
>
> No ping, nothing else possible....
>
> This is the list of recent crashes:
> Tonight 02:42 am
> Yesterday night 02:39 am
> Tuesday at 10:34 am
> Last saturday at 10:44 am
> Last Tuesday at 02:19 am
> The saturday before at 04:01 am
> The thursday before at 04:02 am
> the tuesday before at 02:25 am
>
> Always complete crashes... only reset helped.
>
> Most crashes occur while maintainance tasks.
> However, there are some other crashes, too.
>
> There are never any hints in /var/log/messages
>
> I upgraded to postgresql 7.3 recently, but it doesn't
> seem to help either.
>
> I am almost desperate.
>
> We are running some mysql-servers here, too, and I
> more and more often try to imagine to move my whole
> system to a mysql-server... my collegues NEVER have
> had such trouble with their mysql-servers yet....
>
> Do you have any hints for me? What can I do? My last
> choice would be to move to mysql, but I am almost
> desperate....
>
> thanks for your help
>
> --
>
> Mit freundlichem Gruß
>
> Henrik Steffen
> Geschäftsführer
>
> top concepts Internetmarketing GmbH
> Am Steinkamp 7 - D-21684 Stade - Germany
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