Subject: Re: What is postmaster doing?
From: Dimi Paun <dimi@lattica.com>
To: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
Cc: Jeff Davis <pgsql@j-davis.com>, pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
In-Reply-To: <3615.1287606374@sss.pgh.pa.us>
References: <1287600255.18151.58.camel@dimi.lattica.com>
	<1287604781.28384.50.camel@jdavis-ux.asterdata.local>
	<3615.1287606374@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Organization: Lattica, Inc.
Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2010 16:39:33 -0400
Message-ID: <1287607173.18151.75.camel@dimi.lattica.com>
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On Wed, 2010-10-20 at 16:26 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> > It seems strange that the postmaster is eating 99% cpu. Is there a
> > chance that it's flooded with connection attempts?

Maybe, I'll try to figure that one out next time it happens.

> It's probably a backend process, not the postmaster --- I suspect the
> OP is using a version of ps that only tells you the original process
> name by default.  "ps auxww" or "ps -ef" (depending on platform)
> is likely to be more informative.  Looking into pg_stat_activity,
> even more so.

I'm running CentOS 5.5, using procps-3.2.7-16.el5. I cannot check
more at this point as postmaster seems to have finished whatever it
was doing, but I'll try to investigate better next time.

-- 
Dimi Paun <dimi@lattica.com>
Lattica, Inc.