thanks for the replies !, but actually I did figure out how to kill it
but pb_cancel_backend didn't work. here's some notes: this has been hung for 5 days: ns | 32681 | nssql | <IDLE> in transaction | f | 2010-12-01 15 resulting in: "fastadder_fastadderstatus": scanned 3000 of 58551 pages, containing 13587 live rows and 254709 dead rows; and resulting in general pandemonium you need to become the postgres superuser to use pg_cancel_backend: su postgres psql and then: select pg_cancel_backend(32681); but this does not kill the IDLE in transaction processes. it returns true, but its still there from the linux shell I tried: pg_ctl kill INT 32681 but it still will not die the docs for pg_ctl state: "Use pb_ctl --help to see a list of supported signal names." doing so does indeed tell me the names: HUP INT QUIT ABRT TERM USR1 USR2 but nothing about them whatseover :) throwing caution to the wind: pg_ctl kill TERM 32681 and that did it ran VACUUM and now performance has returned to normal. lessons learned. I guess as Josh says, pg_cancel_backend is the same as SIGINT, which also failed for me using pg_ctl. not sure why. the hung transaction was doing something like update table set field = null where service_id = x On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 9:26 PM, Kenneth Marshall <k...@rice.edu> wrote: > On Mon, Dec 06, 2010 at 03:24:31PM -0500, Josh Kupershmidt wrote: > > On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 2:48 PM, Jon Nelson > > <jnelson+pg...@jamponi.net<jnelson%2bpg...@jamponi.net>> > wrote: > > > On Mon, Dec 6, 2010 at 1:46 PM, bricklen <brick...@gmail.com> wrote: > > >> Not sure if anyone replied about killing your query, but you can do it > like so: > > >> > > >> select pg_cancel_backend(5902); ?-- assuming 5902 is the pid of the > > >> query you want canceled. > > > > > > How does this differ from just killing the pid? > > > > pg_cancel_backend(5902) does the same thing as: > > kill -SIGINT 5902 > > > > Josh > > > > Yes, but you can use it from within the database. The kill command > requires shell access to the backend. > > Cheers, > Ken >
