Re: why not kill -9 postmaster

Dawid Kuroczko wrote:
> On 10/20/06, Shane Ambler <pgsql@007marketing.com> wrote:

>> The one thing worse than kill -9 the postmaster is pulling the power
>> cord out of the server. Which is what makes UPS's so good.
>
>
> Well, I think that pulling the power cord is much safer than killing -9
> the postmaster.  If you pull the plug, then during bootup postgresql
> will just replay every COMMITed transaction, so there won't be any
> dataloss or downtime.

If you kill -9 the postmaster the system can still finish sending
changes to disk and close the file but pulling the power cord can stop a
write in the middle of a block giving you half new data and half old
data in the one file.

It's all a matter of timing.


--

Shane Ambler
Postgres@007Marketing.com

Get Sheeky @ http://Sheeky.Biz