If you do a manual "kill -9" (for testing purposes) on its connected server process, psql normally recovers nicely:
regression=# select 1; ?column? ---------- 1 (1 row) -- issue kill here in another window regression=# select 1; server closed the connection unexpectedly This probably means the server terminated abnormally before or while processing the request. The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: Succeeded. regression=# But try it with an SSL-enabled connection, and psql just dies rudely. Investigation shows that it's being killed by SIGPIPE while attempting to clean up the failed connection: Program received signal SIGPIPE, Broken pipe. 0x00000030f7ec6e80 in __write_nocancel () from /lib64/libc.so.6 (gdb) bt #0 0x00000030f7ec6e80 in __write_nocancel () from /lib64/libc.so.6 #1 0x0000003102497a27 in rl_filename_completion_function () from /lib64/libcrypto.so.6 #2 0x0000003102495e5e in BIO_write () from /lib64/libcrypto.so.6 #3 0x0000003877a1f449 in ssl3_write_pending () from /lib64/libssl.so.6 #4 0x0000003877a1f8b6 in ssl3_dispatch_alert () from /lib64/libssl.so.6 #5 0x0000003877a1d602 in ssl3_shutdown () from /lib64/libssl.so.6 #6 0x00002aaaaaac2675 in close_SSL (conn=0x642d60) at fe-secure.c:1095 #7 0x00002aaaaaabb483 in pqReadData (conn=0x642d60) at fe-misc.c:719 #8 0x00002aaaaaaba9b8 in PQgetResult (conn=0x642d60) at fe-exec.c:1223 #9 0x00002aaaaaabaa8e in PQexecFinish (conn=0x642d60) at fe-exec.c:1452 #10 0x00000000004075b7 in SendQuery (query=<value optimized out>) at common.c:853 #11 0x0000000000409cf3 in MainLoop (source=0x30f8151680) at mainloop.c:225 #12 0x000000000040c3dc in main (argc=<value optimized out>, argv=0x100) at startup.c:352 Apparently we need to do the SIGPIPE disable/enable dance around SSL_shutdown() as well as SSL_write(). I wonder whether we don't need it around SSL_read() as well --- I seem to recall that OpenSSL might either read or write the socket within SSL_read(), due to various corner cases in the SSL protocol. Comments? regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org