Subject: Re: untracked child process (PID XXXXX) exited with exit code 120

From: Torsten Krah <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 May 2026 22:15:23 +0200

Am Donnerstag, dem 07.05.2026 um 19:51 +0200 schrieb Alexander
Kukushkin:
> My guess would be that the postmaster in your container is running
> with
> PID=1.
> The unexpected process was probably started by docker entrypoint
> before it
> did exec postgres [...].
> As a result, this subprocess became a direct child of the postmaster
> and we
> got the problem.
> 
> The most common solution is to avoid running postmaster with PID=1.
> There are two options available:
> 1. dumb-init
> 2. start container using "docker run --init [...]"

My /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d is empty and I did not customize the
default entrypoint or command to run (there was a ready to use data dir
/ volume, so it just skipped initialization on start), so I am not sure
what else should have been started, but I know, just guesswork here.

Between starting the pod initially:

16:52:28.317

and the time the untracked process did fail:

18:39:13.947

nearly 2 hours passed, ah too bad I will never know what PID 120 was.

Yes, the postgres image postgres:18-trixie does run the postgres
process with PID=1:

postgres       1  0.0  0.2 4443124 139360 ?      Ss   May06   0:27 postgres

Using kubernetes as runtime, there is no "--init" option and e.g. tini
is not in the image - if is is a problem running postgres with pid=1,
could e.g. tini be added to the image (if so, do you know where to
address this?) and used as default entrypoint (I know I can build one
myself and extend that image to provide tini, but I would prefer just
to use the upstream image as-is)?

kind regards

Torsten

---

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 07 May 2026 16:22:27 -0400

> Yes, the postgres image postgres:18-trixie does run the postgres

That's just insane.  You should file a bug with whoever supplies
that image.

			regards, tom lane

---

From: Torsten Krah <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 May 2026 00:27:38 +0200

https://github.com/docker-library/postgres/issues/1349

Someone already did, unfortunately they denied that request ... it seems I
have to build my own image or use another one.

Thanks anyway, I can work with that and fix it.

kind regards

Torsten