Sorry if I already reported this, I didn't see it in my feed. Anyway, if the box you are connecting to (that has the Postgres server on it) becomes "unresponsive" (i.e. stops sending or receiving any network packets) then a call to isValid(5) can *hang forever* temporary work around is to set a socketTimeout but it's not my preferred option, since I'd have anticipated "isValid" to have timed out after 5s. FWIW. More info available upon demand. Cheers!