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Heartbeat Monitoring

PgQueuer updates a heartbeat timestamp on every active job so that stalled or crashed workers can be detected.

How It Works

While a job is in the picked state, the QueueManager periodically updates a heartbeat timestamp on the job record. This signals that the job is still actively being processed.

  • Periodic updates: The heartbeat timestamp is refreshed at a configurable interval.
  • Stall detection: External monitoring can compare heartbeat against NOW() to identify stalled or hung jobs.
  • Resource management: Unresponsive jobs do not hold locks indefinitely, and external supervisors can detect and handle stuck workers.

Stall Detection Pattern

You can query for stalled jobs directly in PostgreSQL:

-- Jobs that haven't updated their heartbeat in the last 5 minutes
SELECT id, entrypoint, status, heartbeat
FROM pgqueuer
WHERE status = 'picked'
  AND heartbeat < NOW() - INTERVAL '5 minutes';

Heartbeat Timeout

The heartbeat_timeout parameter on pgq.run() / QueueManager.run() sets the duration after which a picked job with a stale heartbeat becomes eligible for re-pickup by any available worker. Heartbeats are sent automatically at half this interval. This enables automatic recovery from crashed or stalled workers:

from datetime import timedelta

await pgq.run(
    heartbeat_timeout=timedelta(minutes=5),
)

With heartbeat_timeout set, a job that stops updating its heartbeat for the specified duration will be retried by the next available worker.

Workers started from the command line configure the same setting with --heartbeat-timeout (in seconds):

pgq run my_module:my_factory --heartbeat-timeout 300

Note

The default heartbeat_timeout is 30 seconds. Set it to match your expected maximum job runtime plus a safety margin to avoid prematurely re-queuing legitimately long-running jobs.