Re: simultaneous autovacuum and postmaster crash

We had wondered... VM error or hardware error are reasonable
theories, and given the lack of reproduction or other insights it's
probably what we'll attribute it to.  I lean more towards VM error
than hardware...  As for ECC, the particular box is a test box and
does not have ECC.  Our production equipment all has ECC memory.

The packages are actually consistent - it's CentOS built packages
running on CentOS, but Centos itself is running in a VM.  The VM
itself is what's running on Ubuntu.

Thanks for taking a look!



On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 14:21:30 -0500 Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
wrote:
>lsq@nym.hush.com writes:
>> I got a simultaneous autovacuum and postmaster crash, then
>another
>> postmaster crash a few seconds later on restart.  After a third
>> restart the system was stable.  I haven't found anything
>obviously
>> matching this defect on-line.
>
>Those stack traces are pretty fascinating, but after studying them
>I have to think that you had some sort of hardware or VM glitch.
>"Bus error" is an uncommon event on x86_64 platforms, and for
>three
>different processes to all get that, in three unrelated places, at
>nearly the same time pushes the bounds of credulity.  What's more,
>all three of those places are frequently-executed code paths, so
>if
>there were some kind of PG bug there I'm sure we'd have seen it
>before.
>
>I'm not too sure about the wisdom of running packages built for
>Centos
>on Ubuntu, but as for this particular event, I'd write it off to
>cosmic
>rays or something.  (Speaking of which, does that box have ECC
>memory?)
>
>            regards, tom lane