Re: pgsql: Add test for postmaster crash restarts.

On 2017-09-30 18:21:33 -0400, Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> 
> [re-adding commiters which I inadvertently left off]
> 
> 
> On 09/30/2017 06:10 PM, Andres Freund wrote:
> >
> >
> >> I was just looking at this. Why aren't we using "pg_ctl kill" to
> >> terminate the backend? That's supposed to be portable.
> > Because pg_ctl can't do that for any process but postmaster, no? The
> > test is supposed to find issues with backend death (and has
> > defficiencies in error reporting already, and would have caught a bug
> > I'd introduced previously).

> No, I don't think so. That's not what the docs say. That's why you give
> it a pid argument" "pg_ctl kill signal_name process_id"

Oh, cool. Didn't know that one. So the answer is:
"Because Andres doesn't know squat.".

But even after fixing that, there unfortunately is:

static void
set_sig(char *signame)
{
…
#if 0
	/* probably should NOT provide SIGKILL */
	else if (strcmp(signame, "KILL") == 0)
		sig = SIGKILL;
#endif

I'm unclear on what that provision is achieving? If you can kill with
pg_ctl you can do other nasty stuff too (like just use kill instead of
pg_ctl)?

Greetings,

Andres Freund