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

I had a similar error saying 1 user was using the database, I realized it was ME! I shut down my rails server and then did the rake:drop command and it worked!

Answer 2

Here's a quick way to kill all the connections to your postgres database.

sudo kill -9 `ps -u postgres -o pid` 

Warning: this will kill any running processes that the postgres user has open, so make sure you want to do this first.

Answer 3

You can simply monkeypatch the ActiveRecord code that does the dropping.

For Rails 3.x:

# lib/tasks/databases.rake
def drop_database(config)
  raise 'Only for Postgres...' unless config['adapter'] == 'postgresql'
  Rake::Task['environment'].invoke
  ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_all "select pg_terminate_backend(pg_stat_activity.pid) from pg_stat_activity where datname='#{config['database']}' AND state='idle';"
  ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection config.merge('database' => 'postgres', 'schema_search_path' => 'public')
  ActiveRecord::Base.connection.drop_database config['database']
end

For Rails 4.x:

# config/initializers/postgresql_database_tasks.rb
module ActiveRecord
  module Tasks
    class PostgreSQLDatabaseTasks
      def drop
        establish_master_connection
        connection.select_all "select pg_terminate_backend(pg_stat_activity.pid) from pg_stat_activity where datname='#{configuration['database']}' AND state='idle';"
        connection.drop_database configuration['database']
      end
    end
  end
end

(from: http://www.krautcomputing.com/blog/2014/01/10/how-to-drop-your-postgres-database-with-rails-4/)

Answer 4

Just make sure that the you have exited the rails console on any open terminal window and exited the rails server...this is one of the most common mistake made by people

Answer 5

I wrote a gem called pgreset that will automatically kill connections to the database in question when you run rake db:drop (or db:reset, etc). All you have to do is add it to your Gemfile and this issue should go away. At the time of this writing it works with Rails 4 and up and has been tested on Postgres 9.x. Source code is available on github for anyone interested.

gem 'pgreset'

Answer 6

I use the following rake task to override the Rails drop_database method.

lib/database.rake

require 'active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter'
module ActiveRecord
  module ConnectionAdapters
    class PostgreSQLAdapter < AbstractAdapter
      def drop_database(name)
        raise "Nah, I won't drop the production database" if Rails.env.production?
        execute <<-SQL
          UPDATE pg_catalog.pg_database
          SET datallowconn=false WHERE datname='#{name}'
        SQL

        execute <<-SQL
          SELECT pg_terminate_backend(pg_stat_activity.pid)
          FROM pg_stat_activity
          WHERE pg_stat_activity.datname = '#{name}';
        SQL
        execute "DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS #{quote_table_name(name)}"
      end
    end
  end
end