Re: Postgres server crash

Craig A. James wrote:
> Russell Smith wrote:
>>> For the third time today, our server has crashed...
>>
>> I would guess it's the linux OOM if you are running linux. You need to
>> turn off killing of processes when you run out of memory. Are you
>> getting close to running out of memory?
>
> Good suggestion, it was a memory leak in an add-on library that we plug
> in to the Postgres server.
>
> OOM? Can you give me a quick pointer to what this acronym stands for
> and how I can reconfigure it?

Out Of Memory

> It sounds like a "feature" old UNIX
> systems like SGI IRIX had, where the system would allocate virtual
> memory that it didn't really have, then kill your process if you tried
> to use it.

That's it.

> I.e. malloc() would never return NULL even if swap space was
> over allocated. Is this what you're talking about? Having this enabled
> on a server is deadly for reliability.

Indeed. See the manuals for details. Section 16.4.3

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/kernel-resources.html#AEN18128

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd