ipcclean
Application
ipcclean
Clean up shared memory and semaphores from aborted backends
1999-07-20
ipcclean
1999-07-20
Inputs
None.
1999-07-30
Outputs
None.
1999-07-20
Description
ipcclean
cleans up shared memory and semaphore space from aborted backends by
deleting all instances owned by user postgres.
Only the DBA
should execute this program as it can cause bizarre behavior (i.e.,
crashes) if run during multi-user execution. This program should be
executed if messages such as
semget: No space left on device
are encountered when starting up the
postmaster or the backend server.
If this command is executed while postmaster
is running, the shared memory and semaphores allocated by the
postmaster
will be deleted. This will result in a general failure of the
backend servers started by that
postmaster.
This script is a hack, but in the many years since it was written, no
one has come up with an equally effective and portable solution.
Suggestions are welcome.
The script makes assumption about the format of output of the
ipcs
utility which may not be true across different operating systems.
Therefore, it may not work on your particular OS.