Cookbook recipe

Set sane statement, lock, and idle timeouts

Applies to PostgreSQL 13–17 Last reviewed May 2026 Grounded in source

What This Is

A production experience capsule based on real incident patterns.

Why It Matters

Builds production judgment under pressure.

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Estimated investigation4 min

Scenario

Without timeouts, one bad query or held lock can hang the whole system. A few defaults protect you. Diagnose it Check current values: SHOW statement_timeout; SHOW lock_timeout; SHOW idle_in_transaction_session_timeout; Why it happens Defaults are 0 (disabled).…

Investigation Path

Without timeouts, one bad query or held lock can hang the whole system. A few defaults protect you.

Diagnose it

Check current values:

SHOW statement_timeout;
SHOW lock_timeout;
SHOW idle_in_transaction_session_timeout;

Why it happens

Defaults are 0 (disabled). That means a runaway query, a lock waiter, or a leaked transaction can run forever, starving everyone else.

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Related & next steps

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Concepts on this page

Transaction Lock
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