Lock Detection (was: pg_dump failing on LinuxPPC)

Tom Lane wrote:
>
> Stu Coates <stu@StuCoates.com> writes:
> > Anyway, I've sorted my obsolete version problem, and have discovered
> > another.  Attached is a short shell script that causes pg_dump to core
> > dump whilst trying to dump a single, quite simple, table.
>
> Fix committed --- but it just missed the boat for 7.1beta5 :-(.  Please
> try current CVS or tomorrow's snapshot, instead.

Thanks for that Tom, I'll give it a shot later.

On a slightly different matter:

I come from an Oracle background where I can lock an item of data by
performing a "SELECT FOR UPDATE" on the row.  This is also implemented
in PostgreSQL.  A quite useful feature Oracle does have is the ability
to add a "NOWAIT" clause to the end of the command which will cause an
exception if the item of data already has a lock taken out on it.
AFAIK, this is not implemented in PostgreSQL.  I did see a note that
lock timeouts are not implemented, but if "NOWAIT" is added the
application developer could implement/fudge timeouts him/herself.  Would
this be relatively easy to add?

Stu.

--
Stu Coates
Chelmsford, England U.K.
http://www.StuCoates.com/

The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably the day
they start making vacuum cleaners.