On Tue, 2005-02-15 at 04:56, Geoffrey wrote: > Tom Lane wrote: > > "Andrew Hall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > >> We haven't been able to isolate what causes it but it's unlikely to be > >> hardware as it happens on quite a few of our customer's boxes. > > > > > > Okay, then not hardware; but it seems like you ought to be in a position > > to create a test case for other people to poke at. I don't insist on > > a 100% reproducible case, but something that will show the problem if > > run for awhile would be a great help. > > His original statement prompts a question in my mind. I may be wrong > here, but when he noted: > > 'We also use XFS on linux 2.6 as a file system, so the FS should be > fairly tolerant to power-outages.' > > Is Andrew indicating here that there might be some issues with power > loss on some of these boxes? If so, is it reasonable to assume that the > filesystem is able to maintain the database integrity in such a power > loss? I understand that XFS is quite a robust file system, but I can't > see relying on such robustness for database integrity (or any file > integrity for that matter). UPS's might be a better solution.
If I were him I'd try running my database on a different file system to see if his version of XFS might be causing these problems. While I agree that frequent power loss is NOT something a database should be exposed to, a properly setup machine with a properly functioning journalling file system should not experience these problems. Might be time to check the drive subsystem to make sure it's properly fsyncing data. ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
