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help / color / mirror / Atom feedFrom: David Steele <[email protected]>
To: Robert Haas <[email protected]>
To: Tom Lane <[email protected]>
Cc: [email protected] <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: psql casts aspersions on server reliability
Date: Wed, 28 Sep 2016 11:13:36 -0400
Message-ID: <[email protected]> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CA+Tgmoa9D8KO=WmjFHG3dCXW_qY+ouQY8rDNwFFyw4K3Emru6Q@mail.gmail.com>
References: <CA+TgmoZYvqmyQpzSUdtDmtk4Aj94MppDGe9qVJczbPLy4G2Yfg@mail.gmail.com>
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On 9/28/16 10:22 AM, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 9:14 AM, Tom Lane <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Robert Haas <[email protected]> writes:
>>> psql tends to do things like this:
>>> rhaas=# select * from pg_stat_activity;
>>> FATAL: terminating connection due to administrator command
>>> server closed the connection unexpectedly
>>> This probably means the server terminated abnormally
>>> before or while processing the request.
>>
>>> Basically everything psql has to say about this is a lie:
>>
>> I cannot get terribly excited about this. What you seem to be proposing
>> is that psql try to intuit the reason for connection closure from the
>> last error message it got, but that seems likely to lead to worse lies
>> than printing a boilerplate message.
>>
>> I could go along with just dropping the last sentence ("This probably...")
>> if the last error we got was FATAL level. I don't find "unexpectedly"
>> to be problematic here: from the point of view of psql, and probably
>> of its user, the shutdown *was* unexpected.
>
> I don't care very much whether we try to intuit the reason for
> connection closure or not; it could be done, but I don't feel that it
> has to be done. My bigger point is that currently psql speculates
> that the reason for *every* connection closure is abnormal server
> termination, which is actually a very rare event.
>
> It may have been common when that message was added.
> 1a17447be1186fdd36391c58a2a0209f613d89c4 changed the wording this
> message in 2001, and the original message seems to date to
> 011ee13131f6fa2f6dbafd3827b70d051cb28f64 in 1996. And my guess is at
> that time the server probably did just roll over and die with some
> regularity. But today it usually doesn't. It's neither helpful nor
> good PR for libpq to guess that the most likely cause of a server
> disconnection is server unreliability.
>
> I have seen actual instances of customers getting upset by this
> message even though the server had been shut down quite cleanly. The
> message got into a logfile and induced minor panic. Fortunately, I
> have not seen this happen lately.
+1 for making this error message less frightening. I have also had to
explain it away on occasion.
--
-David
[email protected]
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