Received: from localhost (unknown [200.46.204.183]) by developer.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3A4CA2E00AE for ; Mon, 12 May 2008 14:55:52 -0300 (ADT) Received: from developer.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.183]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 59953-05 for ; Mon, 12 May 2008 14:55:42 -0300 (ADT) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from sss.pgh.pa.us (sss.pgh.pa.us [66.207.139.130]) by developer.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E91B62E00B0 for ; Mon, 12 May 2008 14:55:24 -0300 (ADT) Received: from sss2.sss.pgh.pa.us (tgl@localhost [127.0.0.1]) by sss.pgh.pa.us (8.14.2/8.14.2) with ESMTP id m4CHtNTt023044; Mon, 12 May 2008 13:55:23 -0400 (EDT) To: Corey Horton cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org Subject: Re: context switch storm in 8.1.4 on Xeon XP In-reply-to: References: Comments: In-reply-to Corey Horton message dated "Mon, 12 May 2008 11:58:16 -0500" Date: Mon, 12 May 2008 13:55:22 -0400 Message-ID: <23043.1210614922@sss.pgh.pa.us> From: Tom Lane X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Archive-Number: 200805/99 X-Sequence-Number: 29183 Corey Horton writes: > Running 8.1.4 on Xeon MP server running CenOS and we encountered what > appears to be the context switch storm issue that I have seen described > in 7.4 and perhaps is the same one mentioned here: > http://www.postgresql.org/community/weeklynews/pwn20060903.html. Has > this been addressed, and if so, in what version? The patch mentioned there is in 8.2 and up. There are various other patches that have gone in at different times to try to address other contention issues. With so little data as this it's hard to tell exactly what problem you hit. So, if you're going to consider a major-version migration in hopes of solving a performance problem of this kind, it'd likely be a good idea to go to 8.3.x instead of 8.2.x. regards, tom lane