Hi,
First you need to identify the correct postgresql process. Postgresql spawns an individual server process for each database connection. They look something like this:
postgres 27296 7089 9 08:00 ? 00:05:52 postgres: username databasename [local] idle
If a query was running then it would say 'SELECT' instead of 'idle'.
You can send a SIGINT (ie, -2) to that process to cancel a query, eg
kill -2 27296
In most systems SIGINT is the default for kill so you could just do kill <pid>.
The tip is ''kill -9' the postmaster', which has two important differences to the scenario I just described:
1) kill -9 means the OS kills the process without allowing it to clean up after itself
2) The postmaster is the master postgresql backend process. If you want to kill a single query you would not want to kill that.
Regards // Mike
From: Stefan Schwarzer [mailto:stefan.schwarzer@grid.unep.ch]
Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 3:58 PM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: (Never?) Kill Postmaster?
Hi there,
I read dozens of times the "TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster"...
Now, what am I supposed to do if I launched a query which takes ages, and which I want to interrupt?
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