Is there a timeout for idle PostgreSQL connections?

1 S postgres  5038   876  0  80   0 - 11962 sk_wai 09:57 ?        00:00:00 postgres: postgres my_app ::1(45035) idle                                                                                 
1 S postgres  9796   876  0  80   0 - 11964 sk_wai 11:01 ?        00:00:00 postgres: postgres my_app ::1(43084) idle

I see a lot of them. We are trying to fix our connection leak. But meanwhile, we want to set a timeout for these idle connections, maybe max to 5 minute.

It sounds like you have a connection leak in your application because it fails to close pooled connections. You aren't having issues just with <idle> in transaction sessions, but with too many connections overall.

Killing connections is not the right answer for that, but it's an OK-ish temporary workaround.

Rather than re-starting PostgreSQL to boot all other connections off a PostgreSQL database, see: How do I detach all other users from a postgres database? and How to drop a PostgreSQL database if there are active connections to it? . The latter shows a better query.

For setting timeouts, as @Doon suggested see How to close idle connections in PostgreSQL automatically?, which advises you to use PgBouncer to proxy for PostgreSQL and manage idle connections. This is a very good idea if you have a buggy application that leaks connections anyway; I very strongly recommend configuring PgBouncer.

A TCP keepalive won't do the job here, because the app is still connected and alive, it just shouldn't be.

In PostgreSQL 9.2 and above, you can use the new state_change timestamp column and the state field of pg_stat_activity to implement an idle connection reaper. Have a cron job run something like this:

SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pid)
    FROM pg_stat_activity
    WHERE datname = 'regress'
      AND pid <> pg_backend_pid()
      AND state = 'idle'
      AND state_change < current_timestamp - INTERVAL '5' MINUTE;

In older versions you need to implement complicated schemes that keep track of when the connection went idle. Do not bother; just use pgbouncer.

In PostgreSQL 9.6, there's a new option idle_in_transaction_session_timeout which should accomplish what you describe. You can set it using the SET command, e.g.:

SET SESSION idle_in_transaction_session_timeout = '5min';

In PostgreSQL 9.1, the idle connections with following query. It helped me to ward off the situation which warranted in restarting the database. This happens mostly with JDBC connections opened and not closed properly.

SELECT
   pg_terminate_backend(procpid)
FROM
   pg_stat_activity
WHERE
   current_query = '<IDLE>'
AND
   now() - query_start > '00:10:00';

if you are using postgresql 9.6+, then in your postgresql.conf you can set

idle_in_transaction_session_timeout = 30000 (msec)

There is a timeout on broken connections (i.e. due to network errors), which relies on the OS' TCP keepalive feature. By default on Linux, broken TCP connections are closed after ~2 hours (see sysctl net.ipv4.tcp_keepalive_time).

There is also a timeout on abandoned transactions, idle_in_transaction_session_timeout and on locks, lock_timeout. It is recommended to set these in postgresql.conf.

But there is no timeout for a properly established client connection. If a client wants to keep the connection open, then it should be able to do so indefinitely. If a client is leaking connections (like opening more and more connections and never closing), then fix the client. Do not try to abort properly established idle connections on the server side.

Is there a timeout for idle PostgreSQL connections?

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