Andrew - Supernews wrote:
> On 2005-05-01, Peter Eisentraut <peter_e@gmx.net> wrote:
> > The problem, as I understand it, is that if you have a long-running
> > query and the client process disappears, the query keeps running and
> > holds whatever resources it may have until it finishes. In fact, it
> > keeps sending data to the client and keeps ignoring the SIGPIPE it gets
> > (in case of a Unix-domain socket connection).
>
> Ignoring the SIGPIPE is exactly the right thing to do.
>
> What's _not_ a good idea is ignoring the EPIPE error from write(), which
> seems to currently be reported via ereport(COMMERROR) which doesn't try
> and abort the query as far as I can tell.

Where are you seeing this? I looked from PostgresMain() to
ReadCommand() to SocketBackend() to pq_getbyte() which returns EOF, and
PostgresMain checks that and does a proc_exit(0).

I think the main problem is that a long-running query never tries to
interact with the client during the query.

--
Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us
pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 359-1001
+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road
+ Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square, Pennsylvania 19073

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Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us> writes:
> Andrew - Supernews wrote:
>> What's _not_ a good idea is ignoring the EPIPE error from write(), which
>> seems to currently be reported via ereport(COMMERROR) which doesn't try
>> and abort the query as far as I can tell.

> Where are you seeing this? I looked from PostgresMain() to
> ReadCommand() to SocketBackend() to pq_getbyte() which returns EOF, and
> PostgresMain checks that and does a proc_exit(0).

It sounds like you were following the input-from-client logic. Andrew
is complaining about the output-to-client side.

We deliberately don't abort on write-to-client failure. There have
been periodic discussions about changing that, but I'm not convinced
that the advocates for a change have made a good case. Right now,
it's predictable that the backend only fails due to loss of connection
when it waits for a new command. The behavior would become much less
predictable if we allowed write failure to abort the query. As an
example: whether an UPDATE command completes might depend on whether
any invoked triggers try to issue NOTICEs.

regards, tom lane

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