Re: Tainted kernel possible caused by postgresql

On Jun 11, 2015 2:37 AM, "Merlin Moncure" <mmoncure@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 9, 2015 at 3:32 AM, Albe Laurenz <laurenz.albe@wien.gv.at> wrote:
> Norbert Kiam Maclang wrote:
>> I've been experiencing tainted kernel which is my guess caused by postgresql and I don't know where to
>> start. I also guess that this might be a kernel issue. I tried 3.13.0-49 and 3.13.0-53 but no good
>> results. This is happening on 2 of our Ubuntu 14.04.2 servers with postgresql-9.3 version 9.3.5-
>> 0ubuntu0.14.04.1. I am also using the same postgresql version and kernel to other 10 14.04.2 servers
>> and doesn't seem to encounter this problem. Below is the kernel log:
>
> [...]
>> kernel: [653314.516073] CPU: 1 PID: 32055 Comm: postgres Tainted: G        W     3.13.0-53-generic #89-Ubuntu
> [...]
>
> I don't see how PostgreSQL, which runs entirely in user space, could taint a kernel.

Agreed.  Even if postgres caused the kernel issues, the problem
fundamentally lies with the kernel since userspace programs are not
supposed to be able to harm the underlying operating system.  Kernel
bugs do happen and so do hardware issues which can sometimes
masquerade as software issues.   Is this system virtualized?

merlin