[Pgpool-general] pgpool problems

[Bjoern Metzdorf]

Hi all,

we are running a large website with postgresql as backend and php as 
frontend.

Postgresql is running in version 7.4.6 on a dual-xeon (4GB RAM, Debian 
woody) with max connections set to 500. We are reaching this limit 
during peak hours (we use php with pg_pconnect).

For lowering the overhead managed by postgresql I installed 
pgpool-2.5.1. I removed -i from postgresql startup, configured pgpool to 
listen to my main ip:5432 (not localhost nor unix socket) and confirmed 
that with netstat.

When letting the webservers connect to the database (with pg_pconnect or 
pg_connect) everything works fine for some minutes. After around 5 
minutes ps ax only show idle postgres connections, the load on the 
server goes down and NOTHING happens at all. The website just stalls. 
Seems like pgpool just hangs.

my config looks like this:
listen_addresses = 'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx'
port = 5432
socket_dir = '/var/run' #/tmp is occupied by pgsql
backend_host_name = ''
backend_port = 5432
backend_socket_dir = '/tmp'
secondary_backend_host_name = ''
secondary_backend_port = 0
num_init_children = 64
max_pool = 10
child_life_time = 300
connection_life_time = 0
logdir = '/tmp'
replication_mode = false
replication_strict = true
replication_timeout = 5000
load_balance_mode = false
weight_master = 0.5
weight_secondary = 0.5
replication_stop_on_mismatch = false
reset_query_list = 'ABORT; RESET ALL; SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION DEFAULT'
print_timestamp = true
master_slave_mode = false
connection_cache = true
health_check_timeout = 20
health_check_period = 0
health_check_user = 'nobody'

Any hints?

Regards,
Bjoern