SQLSTATE 2BP01Severity lowLab verified

Incident brief

Dependent objects still exist

A DROP ROLE was attempted while that role still owned a table. PostgreSQL refused to drop the role rather than leave an object without a valid owner.

Reproduced on PostgreSQL 16.14Verified 2026-07-16 (Docker lab, PostgreSQL 16.14)Reviewed by Verified against PostgreSQL 16.14 in an isolated lab environment

In 10 seconds

What: Dependent objects still exist
What triggers it: Create a role, then make it the owner of a table.
The fix: Reassign ownership first: ALTER TABLE ... OWNER TO another_role, or use REASSIGN OWNED BY old_role TO new_role for everything at once.
Proof: Reproduced on PostgreSQL 16.14 → Dropping a role that still owned a table was rejected with SQLSTATE 2BP01, naming the exact dependent table in DETAIL.

The fix

What to do right now

The immediate, application-level response to this error.

Reassign ownership first: ALTER TABLE ... OWNER TO another_role, or use REASSIGN OWNED BY old_role TO new_role for everything at once.
Then DROP ROLE succeeds because nothing depends on it anymore.

Fix — SQL

REASSIGN OWNED BY batch7_owner TO postgres;
DROP ROLE batch7_owner;

Diagnose

See it live on the server

Run these against the affected instance to confirm the diagnosis before you act.

Standard triage — not specific to this error

These are canonical PostgreSQL system-catalog queries, shown as SQL to run. No sample output is attached because this is general triage, not a captured lab transcript.

This SQLSTATE does not have an error-specific live snapshot yet. These are the canonical system-catalog queries you run against the affected server to see the problem in real time — standard triage, not a reproduced transcript.

What is running right now

Active backends, how long each has been running, and what it is waiting on.

SELECT pid,
       state,
       wait_event_type,
       wait_event,
       now() - query_start AS running_for,
       left(query, 80)     AS query
FROM   pg_stat_activity
WHERE  state <> 'idle'
  AND  pid <> pg_backend_pid()
ORDER  BY running_for DESC NULLS LAST;

Who is blocking whom

Turn raw blocking PIDs into the actual queries on both sides of the wait.

SELECT blocked.pid    AS blocked_pid,
       blocked.query  AS blocked_query,
       blocking.pid   AS blocking_pid,
       blocking.query AS blocking_query
FROM   pg_stat_activity AS blocked
JOIN   LATERAL unnest(pg_blocking_pids(blocked.pid)) AS b(pid) ON true
JOIN   pg_stat_activity AS blocking ON blocking.pid = b.pid
WHERE  cardinality(pg_blocking_pids(blocked.pid)) > 0;

Locks that are still waiting

Every lock a backend has requested but not yet been granted.

SELECT l.pid,
       l.locktype,
       l.mode,
       l.granted,
       COALESCE(c.relname, l.transactionid::text) AS object
FROM   pg_locks l
LEFT   JOIN pg_class c ON c.oid = l.relation
WHERE  NOT l.granted
ORDER  BY l.pid;

Reproduce & verify

A real, single-session PostgreSQL reproduction

A literal transcript of SQL run against a live PostgreSQL instance in an isolated lab — the commands below are exactly what was executed.

1Create a role, then make it the owner of a table.
2Try to DROP ROLE that role.
3SQLSTATE 2BP01 is reported, naming the dependent table in DETAIL.

One client: create a role, make it own a table, then try to drop the role.

Schema setup

CREATE ROLE batch7_owner;
CREATE TABLE batch7_owned_table (id int);
ALTER TABLE batch7_owned_table OWNER TO batch7_owner;

The rejected DROP ROLE

DROP ROLE batch7_owner;

Confirming the role still works

SELECT rolname FROM pg_roles WHERE rolname = 'batch7_owner';

What PostgreSQL actually returned

Schema setup output

CREATE ROLE
CREATE TABLE
ALTER TABLE

The rejected DROP ROLE output

ERROR:  role "batch7_owner" cannot be dropped because some objects depend on it
DETAIL:  owner of table batch7_owned_table

Confirming the role still works output

   rolname    
--------------
 batch7_owner
(1 row)

Related & next steps

Follow the thread

Everything this error touches — jump straight to the sibling error, term, runbook, or parameter.

Verification

PG 16.14

Last verified: 2026-07-16 (Docker lab, PostgreSQL 16.14)
Reviewed by: Verified against PostgreSQL 16.14 in an isolated lab environment
Audit status: reviewed