Many postgresql processes running on Red Hat Satellite in idle state

Solution In Progress - Updated -

Environment

  • Red Hat Satellite 5.6 or later
  • PostgreSQL

Issue

  • Lots of postgres processes running on Satellite system:
1 S postgres 12384  1485  0  80   0 - 150968 sk_wai Aug04 ?       00:00:00 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema 127.0.0.1(38767) idle 
1 S postgres 12385  1485  0  80   0 - 151759 sk_wai Aug04 ?       00:00:01 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema 127.0.0.1(38768) idle 
1 S postgres 12386  1485  0  80   0 - 151817 sk_wai Aug04 ?       00:00:00 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema 127.0.0.1(38769) idle 
1 S postgres 12387  1485  0  80   0 - 151790 sk_wai Aug04 ?       00:00:00 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema 127.0.0.1(38770) idle 
1 S postgres 31247  1485  0  80   0 - 150965 unix_s 03:14 ?       00:00:00 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema [local] idle          
1 S postgres 31249  1485  0  80   0 - 150965 unix_s 03:14 ?       00:00:00 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema [local] idle          
1 S postgres 31250  1485  0  80   0 - 150965 unix_s 03:14 ?       00:00:00 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema [local] idle          
1 S postgres 31251  1485  0  80   0 - 150965 unix_s 03:14 ?       00:00:00 postgres: rhnuser rhnschema [local] idle          

# ps -ef | grep postgres | grep idle | wc -l
45

Resolution

  • Idle means that the process is not currently executing any queries.

Root Cause

  • PostgreSQL is process based, so it starts one postgres instance per connection. The database starts a process for each connection, both from clients and from other server processes (Taskomatic, Tomcat, etc.)
  • Despite the number of processes, they actually use very little in the way of real resources.

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