Re: Postgres server crash

Craig A. James wrote:
> Russell Smith wrote:
>>> For the third time today, our server has crashed...
>>
>> I would guess it's the linux OOM if you are running linux. You need to 
>> turn off killing of processes when you run out of memory.  Are you 
>> getting close to running out of memory?
> 
> Good suggestion, it was a memory leak in an add-on library that we plug 
> in to the Postgres server.
> 
> OOM?   Can you give me a quick pointer to what this acronym stands for
> and how I can reconfigure it? 

Out Of Memory

 > It sounds like a "feature" old UNIX
> systems like SGI IRIX had, where the system would allocate virtual 
> memory that it didn't really have, then kill your process if you tried 
> to use it. 

That's it.

 > I.e. malloc() would never return NULL even if swap space was
> over allocated.  Is this what you're talking about?  Having this enabled 
> on a server is deadly for reliability.

Indeed. See the manuals for details. Section 16.4.3

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/kernel-resources.html#AEN18128

-- 
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd