Re: shared_buffers Question

Started by Joe Lesterover 21 years ago3 messagesgeneral
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#1Joe Lester
joe_lester@sweetwater.com

Thanks for the suggestion Scott. I did a...

find / -type f -size +100000 -print

The results contained 9 Gig! of swap files:
/private/var/vm/swapfile0
/private/var/vm/swapfile1
/private/var/vm/swapfile10
.... [plus many more entries]

That seems to indicate to me a memory "leak" of some sort. My symptoms
mirror almost exactly those of this fellow, who's thread was never
resolved as far as I can see:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2004-06/msg00013.php

Anyone have any other suggestions on what to look for? At this rate I'm
leaking about 2 to 4 Gigs of memory (swap) per week. I'm running
postgres 7.4.1 on an 700MHz eMac, 512MB RAM, OS 10.3.2. Thanks.

Scott Ribe:
Also check to make sure that some rogue process somewhere isn't

filling your

hard disk with some huge log file. I don't remember the UNIX commands
offhand, but you should sudo a search starting in / for all large

files, say

Joe's Original Message:
I've been running a postgres server on a Mac (10.3, 512MB RAM) with 200
clients connecting for about 2 months without a crash. However just
yesterday the database and all the clients hung. When I looked at the
Mac I'm using as the postgres server it had a window up that said that
there was no more disk space available to write memory too. I ended up
having to restart the whole machine. I would like to configure postgres
so that is does not rely so heavily on disk-based memory but, rather,
tries to stay within the scope of the 512MB of physical memory in the
Mac.

#2Joe Lester
joe_lester@sweetwater.com
In reply to: Joe Lester (#1)

I'm doing a nightly vacuum... so I don't think that's it, although
should I be doing a FULL vacuum instead? The size of my data directory
is only about 389 MB. I'll take a closer look at file sizes going
forward.

echo "VACUUM ANALYZE VERBOSE;" | /Library/PostgreSQL/bin/psql -U
postgres officelink 2>> vacuum.log

Thanks.

From: "Scott Marlowe"
Your shared buffers are almost certainly not the problem here. 2000
shared buffers is only 16 Megs of ram, max. More than likely, the
database filled up the data directory / partition because it wasn't
being vacuumed.

On Sat, 2004-07-31 at 10:25, Joe Lester wrote:

I've been running a postgres server on a Mac (10.3, 512MB RAM) with

200

clients connecting for about 2 months without a crash. However just
yesterday the database and all the clients hung. When I looked at the
Mac I'm using as the postgres server it had a window up that said that
there was no more disk space available to write memory too. I ended up
having to restart the whole machine. I would like to configure

postgres

Show quoted text

so that is does not rely so heavily on disk-based memory but, rather,
tries to stay within the scope of the 512MB of physical memory in the
Mac.

#3Scott Marlowe
smarlowe@qwest.net
In reply to: Joe Lester (#1)

Is the memory freed up if you shut down and restart PostgreSQL? If not,
then it might not be PostgreSQL that's directly causing the issue, but
something like logging. What OS is this by the way?

Show quoted text

On Tue, 2004-08-17 at 15:10, Joe Lester wrote:

Thanks for the suggestion Scott. I did a...

find / -type f -size +100000 -print

The results contained 9 Gig! of swap files:
/private/var/vm/swapfile0
/private/var/vm/swapfile1
/private/var/vm/swapfile10
.... [plus many more entries]

That seems to indicate to me a memory "leak" of some sort. My
symptomsmirror almost exactly those of this fellow, who's thread was
neverresolved as far as I can see:

http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-bugs/2004-06/msg00013.php

Anyone have any other suggestions on what to look for? At this rateI'm
leaking about 2 to 4 Gigs of memory (swap) per week. I'm
runningpostgres 7.4.1 on an 700MHz eMac, 512MB RAM, OS 10.3.2. Thanks.

Scott Ribe:
Also check to make sure that some rogue process somewhere

isn'tfilling your

hard disk with some huge log file. I don't remember the UNIX

commands

offhand, but you should sudo a search starting in / for all

largefiles, say

Joe's Original Message:
I've been running a postgres server on a Mac (10.3, 512MBRAM) with 200
clients connecting for about 2 months without a crash.However just
yesterday the database and all the clients hung. When Ilooked at the
Mac I'm using as the postgres server it had a window upthat said that
there was no more disk space available to write memorytoo. I ended up
having to restart the whole machine. I would like toconfigure postgres
so that is does not rely so heavily on disk-basedmemory but, rather,
tries to stay within the scope of the 512MB ofphysical memory in the
Mac.