Name of main process differs between servers (postmaster vs postgres) - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Jonathan Lemig
Subject Name of main process differs between servers (postmaster vs postgres)
Date
Msg-id CABR8q__052sNrg-2MKaocWWZ16E=R5bTL802=mgBEtZaUyU9Sg@mail.gmail.com
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Responses Re: Name of main process differs between servers (postmaster vspostgres)
Re: Name of main process differs between servers (postmaster vs postgres)
List pgsql-hackers
Hi,

I noticed on two of my postgres servers, one has "postmaster" for the main process, and the other has "postgres".   My question is - why is this?  For example:

Server1:
postgres   909     1  0 May08 ?        00:03:55 /usr/pgsql-9.6/bin/postmaster -D /var/lib/pgsql/9.6/data/


Server2:
postgres  4804     1  0 May01 ?        00:05:08 /usr/pgsql-9.6/bin/postgres -D /var/lib/pgsql/9.6/data



Both servers are running CentOS Linux release 7.4.1708 for the OS and PostgreSQL 9.6.8 on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (GCC) 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-16), 64-bit.

The only differences I've been able to find so far are:

1) When doing a ps, server1 shows a trailing slash for the $PGDATA directory whereas server2 doesn't have the trailing slash. I echoed $PGDATA on both servers and they're both the same (no trailing slash).

2)  Server2 has an additional package installed -- postgresql96-contrib-9.6.8-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.  Aside from that, both servers have the same packages installed:

postgresql96-9.6.8-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64
postgresql96-server-9.6.8-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64
postgresql96-libs-9.6.8-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64
postgresql96-pglogical-2.2.0-1.el7.x86_64


Looking at the documentation, it seems that postmaster is a deprecated alias for the postgres process so while they differ in name, they're the same in spirit?

From what I can tell, things are running fine on both servers, I guess I just don't like there is a difference/inconsistency.  Can anyone please explain this?

Thanks!

Jon


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