Re: BUG #6365: Memory leak in insert and update

havasvolgyi(dot)otto(at)gmail(dot)com writes:
> The following bug has been logged on the website:
> Bug reference: 6365
> Logged by: Otto Havasvlgyi
> Email address: havasvolgyi(dot)otto(at)gmail(dot)com
> PostgreSQL version: 9.1.2
> Operating system: Win XP SP2 x86; Linux Debian 2.6.32 kernel x64
> Description:

> The bug can be reproduced with pgbench:

I see no memory leak with this example.

I suspect you are being fooled by tools that report shared memory as
being used by a process only after it first touches a given page of
shared memory ("top" on Linux does that, for example). This will cause
the apparent memory consumption of any long-lived backend to increase
until it has touched every available shared buffer. But that's not a
leak, just an artifact of the reporting tool. You can confirm for
yourself that that's what's happening by reducing shared_buffers to
a few megabytes and observing that reported memory usage increases up
to that much and then stops growing.

On Linux, I find that watching the "VIRT" column of top output is a
far more reliable guide to whether a memory leak is actually occuring.
Can't offer any suggestions as to what to use on Windows.

regards, tom lane