Re: problem with dead 'drop table' process

Christian Sengstock <csengstock@gmail.com> writes:
> to save the database on a filesystem basis i stopped the postgres server and
> tried to tar the entire pgdata directory. this process stopped with a
> "segmentation fault" during the tar process.

So there's something wrong beyond just postgres ...

> the server is running, and i can connect with another psql client, but the
> drop table process is still present. ps aux shows
> postgres  5548  0.0  0.8 16420 4548 ?   D   07:58   0:00 postgres: postgres
> wlan [local] DROP TABLE
> i cannot kill it with kill -9, and also i'm not sure if i should. maybe the
> database is not running after it at all?

A process stuck in an unkillable disk wait is a pretty common symptom of
low-level problems.  There might be a disk hardware issue --- have you
looked into the kernel message log on the machine?

            regards, tom lane