Re: PostgreSQL - Debian - Processes: postgres: writer process, etc. - Mailing list pgsql-novice

From Gavin Flower
Subject Re: PostgreSQL - Debian - Processes: postgres: writer process, etc.
Date
Msg-id 4F3AE49E.3040900@archidevsys.co.nz
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: PostgreSQL - Debian - Processes: postgres: writer process, etc.  (Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us>)
List pgsql-novice
On 15/02/12 06:16, Bruce Momjian wrote:
On Mon, Jan 30, 2012 at 11:05:10AM -0500, Tom Lane wrote:
What is weird to me is the "COMMAND" column as far as these four processes
are concerned.
In the "COMMAND "column I would expect a real command, not a description.
Can you explain?
We intentionally change the command string reported by ps for each
postmaster child process, so that you can tell the various processes
apart.  If we did not, every postmaster child would show the exact
same command string as the postmaster itself was launched with.
(To get an idea of how useless that is, try looking at "top" sometime
--- on most systems I've worked with, it ignores the changed command
strings, so you can't tell what's what.)
I belive the 'c' command in modern versions of top toggles display of
the current command string.

Yes, pressing 'c' when top is running gives a fuller description of the process command string, had done in Fedora for longer than I can remember.  So I would be surprised if any Linux distribution had not had it for several years.

you can also try
ps aux | grep postgres
at the command line prompt

$ ps aux | grep postgres
postgres  1777  0.0  0.8 2352592 66692 ?       S    11:21   0:01 /usr/bin/postgres -D /var/lib/pgsql/data -p 5432
postgres  2979  0.0  0.0 181024   952 ?        Ss   11:21   0:00 postgres: logger process                       
postgres  2989  0.0  0.1 2353620 14532 ?       Ss   11:21   0:00 postgres: writer process                       
postgres  2990  0.0  0.0 2353620 1092 ?        Ss   11:21   0:00 postgres: wal writer process                   
postgres  2991  0.0  0.0 2354356 2380 ?        Ss   11:21   0:00 postgres: autovacuum launcher process          
postgres  2992  0.0  0.0 183120  1160 ?        Ss   11:21   0:00 postgres: stats collector process              
gavin     5450  0.0  0.0 109248   848 pts/13   S+   11:45   0:00 grep --color=auto postgres
$

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