Re: postgres processes not reflected in pg_stat_activity - Mailing list pgsql-admin

Hi -
Thanks for the response.
I'm on solaris so the ps ax doesn't work for me. I think the equivalent
is ps -ef which shows:
postgres  6939 22678   0 15:49:49 ?           1:33
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22678 16072   0   Aug 06 ?           5:22
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres  5074 22678   0   Aug 12 ?         710:08
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres  8677 22678   0   Aug 13 ?         894:39
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres  8347 22678   0   Aug 25 ?         357:27
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres   343 22678   0   Aug 13 ?         368:30
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres  8678 22678   0   Aug 13 ?         695:15
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 24793 22678   0   Aug 12 ?        2048:13
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22690 22678   0   Aug 06 ?         106:15
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22686 22678   0   Aug 06 ?           3:09
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22691 22678   0   Aug 06 ?        1145:42
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres   350 22678   0   Aug 13 ?         262:39
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 16593 22678   0   Aug 12 ?         731:57
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2
postgres 22688 22678   0   Aug 06 ?         104:59
/services/8.3.5/bin/postgres -D /services/pgdata2

If I'm wrong about the ps commands, please correct me.
When I cross reference this against pg_stat_activity, 5 of them don't
show up, and a top shows the same processes using 0% cpu but almost a
gig of memory. Are these internal postgres processes that don't make a
connection?
Mija





-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Marlowe [mailto:scott.marlowe@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, September 03, 2009 7:54 PM
To: Lee, Mija
Cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [ADMIN] postgres processes not reflected in
pg_stat_activity

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 5:26 PM, Lee, Mija<mija@scharp.org> wrote:
> Hello:
> I have a server that has many more postgres processes (postgres -D
> <datadir>, owned by postgres, listed with an ps -ef) than connections
in
> pg_stat_activity. How can I find out what those processes are?
> I have been going through the docs and found a reference to if the
> autovacuum launcher should show up in pg_stat_activity, but it looks
> like that was implemented in 8.3.
> I'm running 8.3.5 on solaris 10.
> Thanks so much for the help!
> Mija

What does:
$ ps ax|grep postgres
say?

I get something like this at idle:

  312 pts/0    S+     0:00 /usr/lib/postgresql/8.3/bin/psql
  313 ?        Ss     0:00 postgres: smarlowe smarlowe [local] idle
 2784 ?        S      0:01 /usr/lib/postgresql/8.3/bin/postgres -D
/var/lib/postgresql/8.3/main -c
config_file=/etc/postgresql/8.3/main/postgresql.conf
 2787 ?        Ss     0:03 postgres: writer process
 2788 ?        Ss     0:02 postgres: wal writer process
 2789 ?        Ss     0:00 postgres: autovacuum launcher process
 2790 ?        Ss     0:00 postgres: stats collector process
32621 pts/1    S+     0:00 grep postgres