RE: Quite strange crash

> >> Killing an individual backend with SIGTERM is bad luck.  
> >> The backend will assume that it's being killed by the postmaster,
> >> and will exit without a whole lot of concern for cleaning up shared 
> >> memory --- the

SIGTERM --> die() --> elog(FATAL)

Is it true that elog(FATAL) doesn't clean up shmem etc?
This would be very bad...

> > What code will be returned to postmaster in this case?
> 
> Right at the moment, the backend will exit with status 0.  I think you
> are thinking the same thing I am: maybe a backend that 
> receives SIGTERM ought to exit with nonzero status.
> 
> That would mean that killing an individual backend would instantly
> translate into an installation-wide restart.  I am not sure whether
> that's a good idea.  Perhaps this cure is worse than the disease.

Well, it's not good idea because of SIGTERM is used for ABORT + EXIT
(pg_ctl -m fast stop), but shouldn't ABORT clean up everything?

Vadim