There are several ways to shut down the database server. You control
the type of shutdown by sending different signals to the master
postgres
process.
After receiving SIGTERM, the server disallows new connections, but lets existing sessions end their work normally. It shuts down only after all of the sessions terminate normally. This is the Smart Shutdown.
The server disallows new connections and sends all existing server processes SIGTERM, which will cause them to abort their current transactions and exit promptly. It then waits for the server processes to exit and finally shuts down. This is the Fast Shutdown.
This is the Immediate Shutdown, which
will cause the master postgres
process to send a
SIGQUIT to all child processes and exit
immediately, without properly shutting itself down. The child processes
likewise exit immediately upon receiving
SIGQUIT. This will lead to recovery (by
replaying the WAL log) upon next start-up. This is recommended
only in emergencies.
The pg_ctl program provides a convenient interface for sending these signals to shut down the server.
Alternatively, you can send the signal directly using kill
.
The PID of the postgres
process can be
found using the ps
program, or from the file
postmaster.pid
in the data directory. For
example, to do a fast shutdown:
$ kill -INT `head -1 /usr/local/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid`
It is best not to use SIGKILL to shut down
the server. Doing so will prevent the server from releasing
shared memory and semaphores, which may then have to be done
manually before a new server can be started. Furthermore,
SIGKILL kills the postgres
process without letting it relay the signal to its subprocesses,
so it will be necessary to kill the individual subprocesses by hand as
well.