Re: unexpected shutdown

> developer(at)wexwarez(dot)com writes:
>> My database has shutdown several times in the last couple days. I have
>> no
>> idea why. I am running centos and I have not rebooted the server or
>> made
>> any configuration changes.
>
> So in particular, you didn't disable memory overcommit?
>
>> LOG: server process (PID 501) was terminated by signal 9
>
> If you didn't issue a manual kill -9, then this is almost certainly a
> trace of the kernel OOM killer at work. Google for "OOM kill" to learn
> more, or see "memory overcommit" in the PG docs.
>
> Memory overcommit is evil on a server.
>
> regards, tom lane
>

You guys were right
:Jun 17 11:04:57 kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 24928 (postmaster).

I did not disable memory overcommit. I guess this is something I will
have to do. I have actually never seen this before or heard of memory
overcommit. I am surprised a setting like this comes enabled by default.
I read a bit about it and it seems to make sense to disable it, but from
practical experience do you know of any negative side effects?