RH 6.1, PostgreSQL 7.0.2, ipcclean madness - Mailing list pgsql-bugs

From Roland Roberts
Subject RH 6.1, PostgreSQL 7.0.2, ipcclean madness
Date
Msg-id m2aeet24em.fsf@tycho.rlent.pnet
Whole thread Raw
In response to RPM buglet, postgres-devel  (Roland Roberts <roberts@panix.com>)
List pgsql-bugs
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I have finally needed to use ipcclean.  I recently built HaruspeX 4.0,
an application for managing pictures which uses Postgres, and while
asking to delete a table, it hung.  I had the app in the debugger, and
I found it was hung on the database call itself.  So, after waiting a
couple of hours, I decided to bounce postgres by running the init
script.  HaruspeX dutifully reported that the backend had closed the
connection.  However, postgres did not come back up.  I found two
processes running as postgres:

532 root> ps -efw | grep post
postgres 26171     1  0 00:02 ?        00:01:04 /usr/bin/postgres localhost roland family idle
postgres 26188     1  0 00:03 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/postgres localhost roland family idle
root      6681 20510  0 21:20 pts/2    00:00:00 grep post

When I attempted to run pgctl directly, it reported a problem with
semaphore space, so I tried to run ipcclean.  It kept reporting I had
a postmaster running when I couldn't find it.  Finally, I had a look
at the script.  Oops, it has this line:

    if ps x | grep -s 'postmaster' >/dev/null 2>&1 ; then

But consider:

557 root> ps x | grep -s 'postmaster'
 7084 pts/2    S      0:00 grep -s postmaster

So, it keeps seeing its test instead of the real postmaster.  How about

    ps x | grep -s postmaster | grep -v grep

instead?

roland
- --
               PGP Key ID: 66 BC 3B CD
Roland B. Roberts, PhD                    Unix Software Solutions
roberts@panix.com                      76-15 113th Street, Apt 3B
rbroberts@acm.org                          Forest Hills, NY 11375

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