Package: postgresql-common
Version: 114
Severity: critical
Justification: causes serious data loss
The Debian packages for PostgreSQL are subject to a potentially critical data
loss
bug because of an unsafe procedure for restarting PostgreSQL.
It is VITAL that pg_wrapper NEVER unlink the postmaster.pid file. The postmaster
will do that its self if it finds the pid to be stale, but only after performing
some checks to make sure there are no backends still running and to ensure that
there's no other postmaster running against the database.
This is a critical data loss bug and should be back patched to older versions.
I quote Tom Lane (key PostgreSQL dev):
[The] forced unlink on the postmaster.pid file [...] (a) is entirely
unnecessary, and (b) defeats the safety interlock against starting a
new postmaster before all the old backends have flushed out.
See:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2012-07/msg00475.php
and the context:
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2012-07/msg00350.php
http://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/20959/recover-postgresql-database-from-wal-errors-on-startup/20961#comment34356_20961
-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
APT prefers natty-updates
APT policy: (500, 'natty-updates'), (500, 'natty-security'), (500, 'natty')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.38-13-generic (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Versions of packages postgresql-common depends on:
ii adduser 3.112+nmu1ubuntu5 add and remove users and groups
ii debconf [debconf-2.0] 1.5.36ubuntu4 Debian configuration management sy
ii lsb-base 4.0-0ubuntu11 Linux Standard Base 4.0 init scrip
ii postgresql-client-comm 114 manager for multiple PostgreSQL cl
ii procps 1:3.2.8-10ubuntu3 /proc file system utilities
ii ssl-cert 1.0.28 simple debconf wrapper for OpenSSL
postgresql-common recommends no packages.
postgresql-common suggests no packages.
-- debconf information:
postgresql-common/obsolete-major:
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