Rails + Postgres drop error: database is being accessed by other users

Question

I have a rails application running over Postgres.

I have two servers: one for testing and the other for production.

Very often I need to clone the production

Answer 1

When we used the "kill processes" method from above, the db:drop was failing (if :kill_postgres_connections was prerequisite). I believe it was because the connection which that rake command was using was being killed. Instead, we are using a sql command to drop the connection. This works as a prerequisite for db:drop, avoids the risk of killing processes via a rather complex command, and it should work on any OS (gentoo required different syntax for kill).

cmd = %(psql -c "SELECT pg_terminate_backend(procpid) FROM pg_stat_activity WHERE procpid <> pg_backend_pid();" -d '#{db_name}')

Here is a rake task that reads the database name from database.yml and runs an improved (IMHO) command. It also adds db:kill_postgres_connections as a prerequisite to db:drop. It includes a warning that yells after you upgrade rails, indicating that this patch may no longer be needed.

see: https://gist.github.com/4455341, references included