Re: Load a database into memory

Steve Wolfe <steve@iboats.com>

From: "Steve Wolfe" <steve@iboats.com>
To: "pgsql-general" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>
Date: 2001-01-25T17:43:22Z
Lists: pgsql-general
> To increase the performance of my database, I tried to tune options.
> So I disabled fsync(), increased the shared memory on my Linux AND on
> PostGreSQL.
> But I'd like to know if it is possible to load the database into memory
> or maybe is there other options that can change the memory use ?

  If you have enough RAM, the database will already be in memory, in a
manner of speaking - your kernel will have all of the files held in disk
cache.

> What else should I know about memory with PostGreSQL ?

   You can increase the shared memory, and you can increase the amount of
memory used for sorts/joins, but I haven't run across much more than that.
Postgres is just a very memory-efficient piece of work.  I laugh when I hear
of people using MS's database, and adding gigs and gigs of RAM for even
modest databases to perform well.  Our server has a half of a gig, and I
just can't get Postgres to use it all.  I guess I better come up with a few
more large tables to join to. : )

steve