Re: [HACKERS] Quite strange crash

[Tom Lane]

Denis Perchine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Hmmm... actually this is real problem with vacuum lazy. Sometimes it
> just do something for enormous amount of time (I have mailed a sample
> database to Vadim, but did not get any response yet). It is possible,
> that it was me, who killed the backend.

Killing an individual backend with SIGTERM is bad luck.  The backend
will assume that it's being killed by the postmaster, and will exit
without a whole lot of concern for cleaning up shared memory --- the
expectation is that as soon as all the backends are dead, the postmaster
will reinitialize shared memory.

You can get away with sending SIGINT (QueryCancel) to an individual
backend.  Anything else voids the warranty ;=)

But, having said that --- this VACUUM process had only been running
for two minutes of real time.  Seems unlikely that you'd have chosen
to kill it so quickly.

                        regards, tom lane