Re: bgwriter never dies

Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> writes:
> Well, my opinion is based on the question, can we restart the
> postmaster if it dies and the other backends are still running?

You can't start a fresh postmaster until the last of the old backends is
gone (and yes, there's an interlock to prevent you from making this
mistake, though people have been known to override the interlock :-().

This means there's a tradeoff between allowing new sessions to start
soon and letting old ones finish their work.  It seems to me that
either of these goals might have priority in particular situations,
and that it would not be wise for us to design in a forced choice.
With the current setup, the DBA can manually SIGINT or SIGTERM
individual backends when he deems them unworthy of allowing to finish.
If we put in a forced quit as Jan is suggesting, we take away that
flexibility.
        regards, tom lane