Re: Sudden stop of postmaster - Looking for help

> Dave  writes:
> > bash-2.05a$ pg_ctl start -D /var/lib/pgsql/data -s
> > pg_ctl: Another postmaster may be running.  Trying to start 
> postmaster> anyway.
> > Found a pre-existing shared memory block (ID 196608) still in use.
> > If you're sure there are no old backends still running,
> > remove the shared memory block with ipcrm(1), or just
> > delete "/var/lib/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid".
> 
> > bash-2.05a$ rm /var/lib/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid
> 
> Are you certain there wasn't a postmaster still running?  I think you
> may have just shot yourself in the foot.  I'd recommend shutting down
> postgres and making sure (with ps) that there are no remaining
> postgres-owned processes.

I have postgres 7.3 (compiled from source code) in an IBM SMP XServer 
with RH 8.0. And after beeing running 80 days, a partner called me 
saying that our application cannot access to the database. Then I 
logged in, and browse the processes (ps -ax), and there was not any 
postmaster running. I looked the server.log 10 last lines, and seems as 
an optimization, vacuum, statistics or something similar was executed.

I ran the postmaster again, and everything was fine. After it, I think 
that an reboot could be better (so, It will relase memory), and I did 
it.

¿ Where would be the problem ? I think, that in this case, pheraps, the 
problem  could be similar than Dave's.

PD: This server is used only for serving datas with postgresql.