why?

Vince Vielhaber <vev@michvhf.com> writes:

Why does postgresql have to die if the disk fills up? Can't it just
go into an idle state and complain or something?

AFAIR the curl-up-and-die response only occurs if we fail to obtain
space for XLOG or CLOG files; failure to extend ordinary data files
isn't fatal.

I don't really see a way around stopping the system when XLOG or CLOG
is broken. With transaction support not working you can't do anything.

A bright spot is that in 7.2, since we generally recycle rather than
delete/recreate XLOG files, adding space for XLOG is a rare event.
CLOG doesn't grow very fast either (2 bits per transaction). So
you should be more likely to see out-of-space reflected as a user data
file extension failure before you run into XLOG/CLOG trouble.

regards, tom lane