[SOLVED] How to trigger PANIC in PostgreSQL 10

How to trigger PANIC in PostgreSQL 10

I'm using PostgreSQL 10 server version locally for educational purposes, and one of my tasks is to force a PANIC Error on this version just to test how is reported in the log files.

I've edited the /etc/postgresql/10/main/postgresql.conf and modified the following lines:

log_min_messages = PANIC
log_min_error_statement = PANIC

Following PostgreSQL's lastest documentation it specifies that:

PANIC Reports an error that caused all database sessions to abort.

I wanted to know if there was an easy way to trigger this kind of error and get it to be printed on the log files.

I searched a bit, but didn't find anything that could work easily.

Solution

Setting those two parameters to PANIC is not a good idea. Leave them at ERROR or WARNING, PANIC messages will be logged anyway.

There are many ways to provoke a panic. You could for example remove write permissions on the pg_wal directory or other important data structures. Then create some data modification activity (or call pg_switch_wal a couple of times).