Received: from localhost (unknown [200.46.204.183]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 48417650299 for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 14:46:05 -0400 (AST) Received: from mail.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.86]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.183]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 88206-09 for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 14:46:04 -0400 (AST) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from sss.pgh.pa.us (sss.pgh.pa.us [66.207.139.130]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5199065012D for ; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 14:46:03 -0400 (AST) Received: from sss2.sss.pgh.pa.us (tgl@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sss.pgh.pa.us (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id mA4Ik0io025930; Tue, 4 Nov 2008 13:46:00 -0500 (EST) To: "Scott Marlowe" cc: "Laszlo Nagy" , pgsql-admin@postgresql.org Subject: Re: rebellious postgres process In-reply-to: References: <490FFCF4.2050500@shopzeus.com> <16117.1225804625@sss.pgh.pa.us> <49106ED5.10805@shopzeus.com> Comments: In-reply-to "Scott Marlowe" message dated "Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:03:30 -0700" Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 13:46:00 -0500 Message-ID: <25929.1225824360@sss.pgh.pa.us> From: Tom Lane X-Archive-Number: 200811/27 X-Sequence-Number: 30681 "Scott Marlowe" writes: > On Tue, Nov 4, 2008 at 8:48 AM, Laszlo Nagy wrote: >> The server was rebooting intermittently, so we replaced the RAM (we got a >> kernel page fault). But it was a week ago. The server is now stable. But is >> it possible that somehow the file system became inconsistent, and that is >> causing an infinite loop in the stats collector? Just guessing. > Yes, you really can't trust any data that was written to the drives > while the bad memory was in place. Still, it's quite unclear how bad data read from the stats file could have led to an infinite loop. The stats file format is pretty "flat" and AFAICS the worst effect of undetected corruption would be to have wrong count values for some tables/databases. regards, tom lane