Re: Postmaster crashes with "Serverloop: select failed" message

Paul Breen <paulb@computerpark.co.uk> writes:
> The problem is that the Postmaster has crashed twice now and both times
> the last message in the Postmaster's log was:
>     /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster: ServerLoop: select failed: No child
>     processes

This sounds like the bug we recently recognized that the SIGCHLD signal
processor has to save and restore errno.  There is a fix in current
sources.  I do not have a patch for 7.0.* handy, but you could probably
adapt the change that was applied:

http://www.postgresql.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/pgsql/src/backend/postmaster/postmaster.c.diff?r1=1.198&r2=1.199&f=c

The additions to reaper() are the only critical part, I think.

> We also seem to get a large number of the following message in our
> Postmaster's log:
>     pq_recvbuf: unexpected EOF on client connection
> Are these connected?  What do the messages mean?

No, those just mean that some client is disconnecting without bothering
to send the "I'm done" message.  It's pretty harmless from the DB's
point of view.  Do you have a client that crashes a lot?

            regards, tom lane