Re: Have vacuum emit a warning when it runs out of maintenance_work_mem

From: "Jim C(dot) Nasby" <jim(at)nasby(dot)net>
To: Robert Treat <xzilla(at)users(dot)sourceforge(dot)net>
Cc: pgsql-patches(at)postgresql(dot)org, Guillaume Smet <guillaume(dot)smet(at)gmail(dot)com>, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>, Jim Nasby <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org>
Subject: Re: Have vacuum emit a warning when it runs out of maintenance_work_mem
Date: 2007-05-12 17:01:45
Message-ID: 20070512170144.GE52939@nasby.net
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
Lists: pgsql-patches

On Fri, May 11, 2007 at 10:18:30PM -0400, Robert Treat wrote:
> On Wednesday 09 May 2007 19:41, Guillaume Smet wrote:
> > On 5/9/07, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > > Jim Nasby <decibel(at)decibel(dot)org> writes:
> > > > Any time this happens it's generally a nasty surprise for users.
> > >
> > > Really? Running out of work memory is expected on large tables.
> >
> > Sure. Perhaps we should find a better error message but it's an
> > interesting information. Personnaly, I try to choose a sane value
> > depending on my database but I'm never sure it's really sufficient or
> > if I added 100MB it would have made a real difference.

Unfortunately, a lot of users aren't as knowledgeable as folks here,
that's why I made it a warning and gave it a hint. But if people think
that's too high a level we can change it to something lower...

> If we were going to implement this (and I'm a tad skeptical as well), wouldn't
> it be better if the warning occured at the end of vacuum, and told you how
> much memory was actually needed, so you'd know what maintainence_work_mem
> should be.

Maybe... the problem is that for really large tables you simply won't
have a choice; it will have to fall to disk. So I think we'd have to
keep per-table warnings, unless you've got an idea for how we could
account for tables that wouldn't reasonably fit?
--
Jim Nasby jim(at)nasby(dot)net
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)

In response to

Responses

Browse pgsql-patches by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Heikki Linnakangas 2007-05-12 18:57:44 Re: Have vacuum emit a warning when it runs out of maintenance_work_mem
Previous Message Henry B. Hotz 2007-05-12 16:53:49 Re: Preliminary GSSAPI Patches