Re: Dying PostgreSQL backend

Hello,

Unfortunately, I cannot get PostgreSQL to dump core despite setting ulimit -c to:
[root@linux2 otis]# ulimit -a
core file size (blocks) unlimited

And starting PostgreSQL this way:
su -l postgres -s /bin/sh -c "/usr/bin/pg_ctl -D $PGDATA -p /usr/bin/postmaster start"

The backend doesn't want to dump core, it just dies and restarts, dies and restarts.
I am really running only 2 very similar UPDATE statements. They update the same table, changing only a few fields.

I tried running VACUUM ANALYZE more frequently, but that didn't make any difference.

Is there any other way that I can get more information out of postgres backend?

Thanks,
Otis
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<-----Original Message----->
>
> From: Tom Lane
> Sent: 5/6/2002 12:47:31 PM
> To: otisg@iVillage.com
> Cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Dying PostgreSQL backend
>
> "otisg" writes:
> What gets logged in syslog log file are things like this:
>
> The messages you quoted are no help, because none of them directly
> show the crashing backend.
>
> What I'd recommend doing is gdb'ing the core dump file to get a stack
> trace; that would give us some clue what's wrong. And you could do
> "p debug_query_string" to see what query made it crash.
>
> If you do not find a core file in the database subdirectory
> ($PGDATA/base/yourdbnumber/core) then you are probably running the
> postmaster with "ulimit -c 0" which disables core dumps. Restart
> it with environment "ulimit -c unlimited".
>
> regards, tom lane
>