Re: Fresh build on OS X not working (memory)

On Apr 30, 2010, at 3:35 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
> Does the theory of a pre-existing smaller shmem segment make sense from
> your end? In particular, had you previously had another Postgres server
> running on that machine, and perhaps killed it ungracefully? If this
> theory is correct, the issue was "fixed" as a result of rebooting (thus
> making the old segment go away), not as a result of any changes of the
> shm parameters. OTOH I'd have expected you to have to reboot multiple
> times while experimenting with the shm parameters, so I'm not entirely
> convinced I've hit on the right explanation.

It seems probably that you have hit the nail squarely on the head. I had installed from the one-click (which was working with the memory changes supplied in the README), and IIRC I tried to kill a few processes in preparation for a manual uninstall before I found the supplied uninstall app. I then compiled and installed from source. When that failed as described earlier, all changes I made to the settings were (as you guessed) through the sysctl -w option without a reboot. The first reboot I had was after I replaced my sysctl.conf wholesale with yours, and all was well.

Nice sleuthing. If I didn't have so many things going on at the moment I'd revert to the supplied settings and test to ensure it works and provide a confirmation. I'll try to remember to do that later.

Thanks again for your help and good information.