Incident brief
No active SQL transaction
A command that only makes sense inside an open transaction block was issued with none active. PostgreSQL rejected it instead of silently ignoring it.
In 10 seconds
- What
- No active SQL transaction
- What triggers it
- Issue ROLLBACK AND CHAIN with no transaction block open.
- The fix
- Only issue AND CHAIN variants inside an already-open transaction block (after BEGIN).
- Proof
- Reproduced on PostgreSQL 16.14 → ROLLBACK AND CHAIN with no transaction block open was rejected with SQLSTATE 25P01. The session was unaffected afterward.
The fix
What to do right now
The immediate, application-level response to this error.
- Only issue AND CHAIN variants inside an already-open transaction block (after BEGIN).
- Plain COMMIT/ROLLBACK outside a transaction block are not an error at all — just a warning, see the premium test.
- Don't 'fix' this by unconditionally prefixing a defensive BEGIN — see the counterexample for what that can silently discard.
BEGIN;
-- ... statements ...
ROLLBACK AND CHAIN;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;Why it happens
What PostgreSQL is telling you
The mechanism behind the error, grounded in the official manual — not paraphrased.
PostgreSQL 16 Documentation — ROLLBACK
Issuing ROLLBACK outside of a transaction block emits a warning and otherwise has no effect. ROLLBACK AND CHAIN outside of a transaction block is an error.Read the full section on postgresql.org →
The chained ROLLBACK with no open transaction
AND CHAIN means 'roll back, then immediately start a new transaction with the same characteristics' — with no transaction open, there's nothing to roll back or chain from, so PostgreSQL rejects it outright.Confirming the session still works
The rejected statement didn't affect the session — the next statement ran normally.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.
- 1Issue ROLLBACK AND CHAIN with no transaction block open.
- 2PostgreSQL has no current transaction to chain from.
- 3SQLSTATE 25P01 is reported.
One client: issue ROLLBACK AND CHAIN with no BEGIN first.
-- No table needed for the free reproduction; the counterexample below
-- creates its own table.
SELECT 'no schema required' AS setup_note;ROLLBACK AND CHAIN;SELECT 1 AS session_still_alive;What PostgreSQL actually returned
setup_note
--------------------
no schema required
(1 row)ERROR: ROLLBACK AND CHAIN can only be used in transaction blocks session_still_alive
----------------------
1
(1 row)The manual draws a sharp line between plain ROLLBACK/COMMIT outside a transaction (a warning) and their AND CHAIN forms (an error). This was tested directly.
Issue plain COMMIT and ROLLBACK, each with no transaction block open.
Without this
Above: ROLLBACK AND CHAIN with no open transaction is a real ERROR.
With this, tested
Below: plain COMMIT and ROLLBACK with no open transaction only WARN — no error, no SQLSTATE raised to the client as an exception.
What Pro unlocks here
- The exact prevention SQL — copy-paste ready
- Raw psql output captured from the Docker lab
- A senior-DBA action list to take it further
- Live monitoring queries to catch it in production
- The deeper audit: fix-that-fails counterexample, GUC before/after, server-log evidence
Related & next steps
Follow the thread
Everything this error touches — jump straight to the sibling error, term, runbook, or parameter.
Verification
- 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