Re: kill 'zombies' - Mailing list pgsql-odbc

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: kill 'zombies'
Date
Msg-id 21459.1039482712@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to kill 'zombies'  (Simeó Reig <simeo@incofisa.com>)
List pgsql-odbc
=?iso-8859-1?Q?Sime=F3_Reig?= <simeo@incofisa.com> writes:
> Sometimes access dies and we have lot of 'zombies' connections in our
> server, is it possible to kill only this threads without restart database ?

If it shows as "zombie" in ps, then you can't kill it (because it's
already dead).  kill will have absolutely zero effect.

This should not happen, though.  The only way a Postgres child process
could stay as "zombie" for more than a few milliseconds is if the
postmaster is hung up and unable to notice the dead child process.
If the postmaster were hung, you'd have a lot worse problems than zombie
processes --- you'd not be able to make new connections at all.  So I
think you aren't giving us the straight scoop.  Are you sure that these
zombie processes are actually Postgres processes?  Look to see what
their parent process is.

> PostgreSQL 7.1.3 under freeBSD

You could do worse than update to 7.2.  It's *much* harder for a
misbehaving client to hang the postmaster than it was pre-7.2.
But I'm not convinced that you're describing a Postgres problem.

            regards, tom lane

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