crashing Xeon?

Hi list,

I have been using PostgreSQL for a GIS database on different Linux
(mostly SuSE 8.1) boxes, and so far everything fine.

Now I tried to set up a "bigger" database server
(HP ProLiant DL 380-G3, 2x Intel Pentium4-Xeon, 2.8 GHz
4 GB memory and a RAID 5 system with ca. 500 GB diskspace) under SuSE 8.1

When compiling PostgreSQL 7.3.4, (GNU Make version 3.79.1) everything
went fine. Then I wanted to set up several database instances and fill
them from SQL dumps (1 ...1.5 GB each) and lots of indices (btree and
rtree).

I monitored the filling process. When reading data, all was fine. When
setting up the indices after reading the data, I managed to crash the
system (?!) several times (not regularly, but mostly related with heavy
load on the box (e.g. zipping large files while filling the databases).
Normally, this should result only in slowing down the machine (may be
VERY slow) but I see the postmaster processes lose CPU percentage while
the system load (xload) even increases until everything (not only the
database) is blocked.

When doing the same things for our older Athlon single-processor boxes,
everything went slowly, but fine

a) The dumps come from 7.1.3 databases. This should not be any problem,
I think.
b) Normally, I would expect only the application (i.e. the database to
crash, but not the system.
c) Do I run into some multiprocessor problems? Missed some compiler
option providing thread-safe processing?

Is there anybody who can give me some hint on fixing the problem? Any
help will be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Hubert

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr.-Ing. Hubert Fröhlich
Bezirksfinanzdirektion München
Alexandrastr. 3, D-80538 München, GERMANY
Tel. :+49 (0)89 / 2190 - 2980
Fax :+49 (0)89 / 2190 - 2459
hubert(dot)froehlich(at)bvv(dot)bayern(dot)de