[postgis-devel] FATAL: terminating connection due to administrator command (Reloaded)

[Peter Hopfgartner]

Some time ago I've posted to the PostgreSQL general ML, http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/Getting-FATAL-terminating-connection-due-to-administrator-command-td2840596.html, on error messages like the following:

Warning: [MapServer Error]: msPostGISLayerWhichShapes(): Error (FATAL: terminating connection due to administrator command Server beendete die Verbindung unerwartet Das heißt wahrscheinlich, daß der Server abnormal beendete bevor oder während die Anweisung bearbeitet wurde. ) executing query: select encode(AsBinary(force_collection(force_2d("the_geom")),'NDR'),'hex') as geom,"srn_id" from geo_hochfuegen.ski_run where the_geom && GeomFromText('POLYGON((-120769.818908122 235010,-120769.818908122 238267,-114698.181091878 238267,-114698.181091878 235010,-120769.818908122 235010))',find_srid('','geo_hochfuegen.ski_run','the_geom')) and (srn_id = 0) in ./map/map.php on line 219

The thread had many participants and Tom Lane gave some more insight on the topic, but no definitive conclusions were obtained.
A very annoying property of this issue is that it happens at random, the same query works most of the time, but fails sometimes.
The problem happens on PostGIS 1.3 1.4 and 1.5, on PostgreSQL 8.1, 8.2 and 8.4, on 32 bit and 64 bit CentOS 5 (from 5.3 to 5.5).
In the mean time, we found a deterministic way to trigger this error message, see http://trac.osgeo.org/postgis/ticket/627, which is why I hav some suspect that it originates from somewhere inside PostGIS or GEOS. Anyway, it happens even on tables which do not have invalid data.
Furthermore, it happens rarely, but when it happens, then it happens in a row of about 2 to 10 times.

Any advice on how to proceed with the diagnosis is highly appreciated. Even the simple notice if anybody else does have the same problem, together with a summary of their setup, would be a great help.

Peter Hopfgartner
 
R3 GIS Srl - GmbH
http://www.r3-gis.com