Re: Safely Killing Backends

>>>>> "TFO" == Thomas F O'Connell <Thomas> writes:

TFO> Which brings up a follow-up question: is it documented anywhere
TFO> exactly what goes on in recovery mode? If so, I've not found it.

TFO> When I've experienced this, it has seemed quicker just to stop and
TFO> restart postgres than to let recovery mode complete. Is that unsafe?

The recovery has to happen at some point.  What it is doing is
bringing your DB to a known valid state based on the committed
transactions, what's written to disk, and what's written to the
pg_xlog files.  A vacuum is probably in good order after this happens.

Effectively, it does the moral equivalent of unplugging the power cord
and restarting itself, without the bother of needing to reboot the
whole machine :-)

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