Re: ERROR: out of memory DETAIL: Failed on request of size ???

On Mon, Nov 18, 2013 at 8:30 PM, Brian Wong <bwong64(at)hotmail(dot)com> wrote:

> I've tried any work_mem value from 1gb all the way up to 40gb, with no
> effect on the error. I'd like to think of this problem as a server process
> memory (not the server's buffers) or client process memory issue, primarily
> because when we tested the error there was no other load whatsoever.
> Unfortunately, the error doesn't say what kinda memory ran out.
>

I wasn't asking because I thought you should make it higher, I think you
should make it lower. Set it to 200MB and reload your conf files ("select
pg_reload_conf()") and try your queries again. work_mem is a per step
setting, used by aggregates and sort steps, potentially multiple times in a
single query, also multiplied by any other concurrent queries. In this
case, it might not be the cause, but certainly try a lower setting to rule
it out.