Andrew Biagioni <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On three different machines running the same PostgreSQL version (7.3.5) > on Linux and almost identical databases, I have been plagued by > occasional, unexplainable (to me) reboots of the computer.
Postgres can *not* cause a system reboot; it's only an unprivileged user process. (but see *) You are dealing with either kernel bugs, hardware errors, or some other root-level process requesting a reboot. Even though it being three different machines would seem to rule out hardware issues, I'd not jump to that conclusion ... you might be having some kind of common-mode hardware failure. Two questions to ask here: * did you buy all the RAM from the same vendor? * is the power utility flaky where you live? (If you say "but I've got a UPS", how old are its batteries?) My money would be on a kernel bug though. Are you up2date on kernel patches? regards, tom lane (*) ObFinePrint: at least, PG can't directly trigger a reboot. One scenario to think about is flaky RAM in an address range that doesn't get used until the machine is under significant load --- since you say Postgres is the only significant load on the machine, it's entirely possible that triggering of a hardware failure is closely correlated to what Postgres is doing. Similar remarks apply to broken disk hardware. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster