>> This *really* sounds like you have a system wide problem, not just a
>> PostgreSQL problem.
>>
>> Can't imagine how moving to MySQL will help with that. ;-)
Actually, moving to MySQL will make it worse. We can say with
confidence that a system lockup is not Postgres' fault because Postgres
does not (and will not) run as root. I'm not sure whether MySQL *must*
be root, but that seems to be a pretty common way of setting it up ...
and when you do that, you can't entirely exclude it from consideration
when you're looking at problems that would require root privileges to
cause.
> Addtionally, have you considered the possibility of a hardware
> problem?
I tend to agree with Ian on that --- it sounds more like flaky hardware
than anything else. Time for memtest86 and some disk testing too.
regards, tom lane
