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We're getting a bit of an anomaly relating to pg_stat_activity...

oxrstld=# SELECT * from pg_stat_activity where current_query <> '<IDLE>';
datid | datname | procpid | usesysid | usename | current_query | query_start
------------+---------+---------+----------+---------+---------------+-------------------------------
1347729970 | oxrstld | 893094 | 122 | tldepp | commit | 2006-12-16 19:34:08.583978+00
(1 row)
oxrstld=# select version();
version
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PostgreSQL 7.4.12 on powerpc-ibm-aix5.3.0.0, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 4.0.1
(1 row)

That PID has been dead for several days, but this connection is marked
as being open, still, after lo many days.

This has *traditionally* been a sign that the stats collector has been
clobbered, at which point pg_stat_activity becomes useless. That's
not the case here; a less restricted query on pg_stat_activity shows
other more recent data that keeps changing, seemingly consistent with
system activity.

I can track most of the lifecycle of that PID; the connection was
established at 2006-12-16 18:46:38, and I see a few errors associated
with the PID (violations of unique constraints; usual business stuff).
I see nothing in the logs at around 19:34 which would suggest a reason
for any strange behaviour. There are no records about that PID after
19:34...

I'd like to get rid of this entry, if I can; it's blowing up tests
that warn us about elderly transactions, causing a false positive...
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Chris Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
> We're getting a bit of an anomaly relating to pg_stat_activity...
> ...
> That PID has been dead for several days, but this connection is marked
> as being open, still, after lo many days.

This probably just means that the "backend termination" stats message
got dropped due to heavy load. That's expected behavior in all pre-8.2
releases: the stats system was never intended to provide
guaranteed-exactly-correct status. PG 8.2 has reimplemented the
pg_stat_activity view to make it more trustworthy. (The other stuff is
still probabilistic, but being just event counters, message loss isn't
so obvious.)

regards, tom lane

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tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us (Tom Lane) writes:
> Chris Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
>> We're getting a bit of an anomaly relating to pg_stat_activity...
>> ...
>> That PID has been dead for several days, but this connection is marked
>> as being open, still, after lo many days.
>
> This probably just means that the "backend termination" stats message
> got dropped due to heavy load. That's expected behavior in all pre-8.2
> releases: the stats system was never intended to provide
> guaranteed-exactly-correct status. PG 8.2 has reimplemented the
> pg_stat_activity view to make it more trustworthy. (The other stuff is
> still probabilistic, but being just event counters, message loss isn't
> so obvious.)

That seems a *bit* surprising; the system wasn't expected to be under
particularly heavy load during the period in question; I would have
expected "particularly light load." No matter; there may have been
some brief heavy load to cause this.

There isn't any way, short of restarting the postmaster, to get rid of
that PID, is there?
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Chris Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
> There isn't any way, short of restarting the postmaster, to get rid of
> that PID, is there?

The entry will get overwritten when that BackendId slot gets re-used,
so just starting enough concurrent backends should do it. (Since
incoming backends always take the lowest free slot, the fact that the
dead entry has persisted awhile means that it must have a number higher
than your normal number of concurrent sessions ... which is evidence
in favor of the idea that it happened during a load spike ...)

regards, tom lane

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A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us (Tom Lane) wrote:
> Chris Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
>> There isn't any way, short of restarting the postmaster, to get rid of
>> that PID, is there?
>
> The entry will get overwritten when that BackendId slot gets re-used,
> so just starting enough concurrent backends should do it. (Since
> incoming backends always take the lowest free slot, the fact that the
> dead entry has persisted awhile means that it must have a number higher
> than your normal number of concurrent sessions ... which is evidence
> in favor of the idea that it happened during a load spike ...)

Cool. I started up a nice little bunch of psql sessions in the
background, and then once they were all up, shut down my shell
session, thereby eliminating them. And that did, indeed, clear out
that pg_stat_activity entry.

.... And five minutes later, Nagios sent me message indicating that
node had recovered from having an "ancient" open connection.

I'll re-add a few gratuitous details here in the hopes that that makes
this easily findable if anyone else should search for the issue...

The Problem:
- pg_stat_activity was reporting an elderly transaction in progress

- that backend process wasn't running anymore

- pg_stat_activity *was* reporting other legitimate activity; this
was not the scenario where it had gotten deranged (normally due to
excessive load)

- Per Tom's comments, there evidently *was* some load spike where
the closing of this particular connection did not get logged by
the stats collector

The Solution:

- We needed to roll the stats collector through a bunch of its slots
in order to clean the apparently-still-populated entry out.

- Ran, in a shell:
for i in `seq 100`; do
psql &
done

That left 100 psql sessions in the background, all connected to the
database backend.

- Closed the shell. That then HUPped the 100 psql sessions.

That got the offending pg_stat_activity entry cleared out.
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