Stephen Frost <sfr...@snowman.net> writes: > All, > We recently had a client complain that check_postgres' commitratio > check would alert about relatively unused databases. As it turns > out, the reason for this is because they automate running pg_dump > against their databases (surely a good thing..), but pg_dump doesn't > close out its transaction cleanly, leading to rolled back > transactions.
> At first blush, at least, this strikes me as an oversight which we > should probably fix and possibly backpatch. No, somebody should fix check_postgres to count rollbacks as well as commits as activity (as they obviously are). This is not an oversight, it's 100% intentional. The reason pg_dump aborts rather than commits is to make entirely sure that it does not commit any changes to the database. I would be against removing that safety feature, considering that pg_dump is typically run as superuser. We have frequently worried about security exploits that involve hijacking superuser activities, and this behavior provides at least a small increment of safety against such holes. regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers