problem with dead 'drop table' process

hi,
today i wanted to backup my entire database with a 'pg_dumpall'. during this
i got an error message that the copy of a certain table to stderr is not
possible. i don't know the exact error message right know it was something
like
"failure: copy strside ( [columns] ) to stderr"
and the dump was aborted.
then i tried to copy the content of the faulty table to another table
# create table strside2 (like strside);
# insert into strside2 select * from strside;
during the insert process the connection to the postgres db was lost. the
logfile showed following error message
LG: server process (PID 5540) was terminated by signal 11
LG: terminating any other active server processes
WARNING: terminating connection because of crash of another server process
DETAIL: The postmaster has commanded this server process to roll back the
current transaction and exit, because another server process exited
abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory.
HINT: In a moment you should be able to reconnect to the database and
repeat your command.
LG: all server processes terminated; reinitializing
LG: database system was interrupted at 2006-01-20 07:56:30 PST
following recovery start.
to save the database on a filesystem basis i stopped the postgres server and
tried to tar the entire pgdata directory. this process stopped with a
"segmentation fault" during the tar process.
after that i wanted to drop the faulty table, because i got another copy of
it. however the "drop table strside" process did not stop. i tried a ctrl-c
to abort, but it did not work.
the server is running, and i can connect with another psql client, but the
drop table process is still present. ps aux shows
postgres 5548 0.0 0.8 16420 4548 ? D 07:58 0:00 postgres: postgres
wlan [local] DRP TABLE
i cannot kill it with kill -9, and also i'm not sure if i should. maybe the
database is not running after it at all?
anyone got any hints?
thanx,
chris

No. 1# | By Developer Tags User at [2008-5-4] | size: 1001 bytes

Christian Sengstock <csengstock (AT) gmail (DOT) comwrites:
to save the database on a filesystem basis i stopped the postgres server and
tried to tar the entire pgdata directory. this process stopped with a
"segmentation fault" during the tar process.

So there's something wrong beyond just postgres

the server is running, and i can connect with another psql client, but the
drop table process is still present. ps aux shows
postgres 5548 0.0 0.8 16420 4548 ? D 07:58 0:00 postgres: postgres
wlan [local] DRP TABLE
i cannot kill it with kill -9, and also i'm not sure if i should. maybe the
database is not running after it at all?

A process stuck in an unkillable disk wait is a pretty common symptom of
low-level problems. There might be a disk hardware issue have you
looked into the kernel message log on the machine?

regards, tom lane

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problem with dead 'drop table' process

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