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Message-ID: <dcc563d10901131416w73527ec4i29bbd2920631dbc1@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:16:18 -0700
From: "Scott Marlowe" <scott.marlowe@gmail.com>
To: "Scott Whitney" <swhitney@journyx.com>
Subject: Re: Strange deadlock error last night
Cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
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On Tue, Jan 13, 2009 at 10:37 AM, Scott Whitney <swhitney@journyx.com> wrote:

> It ended up locking up about 250 customer databases until I restarted the
> postmaster. This is version 8.1.4. Upgrading right now (even to a minor rev)
> is not really an option. This box has been up and running for 306 days. This
> postgres level has been installed for..err...well...at least Aug 9, 2006,
> based on some dates in the directories.

You need to ask yourself how much downtime you can afford.  The 2 or 3
minutes every few months to go from 8.1.x to 8.1.x+1, or the half a
day of downtime when some horrendous bug takes down the whole site
because you didn't update it.  Seriously, that unfozen template0 bug
that Alvarro mentioned is one of those kinds of bugs.

Nothing like your db going down in the middle of the day with an error
message that it's going down to prevent txid wraparound induced loss,
please run vacuum on all your databases in single user mode.

If you can't find set aside a minute or two at 0200 hrs, then don't be
surprised when you get one of those failures.