Re: Memory Errors

Sam Nelson <samn@consistentstate.com> writes:
> Okay, we're finally getting the last bits of corruption fixed, and I finally
> remembered to ask my boss about the kill script.

> The only details I have are these:

> 1) The script does nothing if there are fewer than 1000 locks on tables in
> the database

> 2) If there are 1000 or more locks, it will grab the processes in
> pg_stat_activity that are in a waiting state

> 3) for each of the previous processes, it will do a system kill $pid call

> The kill is not pg_terminate_backend or pg_cancel_backend, and it's also not
> a kill -9.  Just a normal kill.

SIGTERM then.  Since (according to the other thread) this was 8.3.11,
that should in theory be safe; but it's not something I'd consider
tremendously well tested before 8.4.x.

I'd still lean to the theory of data lost during an EC2 instance
shutdown.

            regards, tom lane