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To: "Craig A. James" <cjames@modgraph-usa.com>
cc: Richard Huxton <dev@archonet.com>, Russell Smith <mr-russ@pws.com.au>,
	pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Postgres server crash 
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Comments: In-reply-to "Craig A. James" <cjames@modgraph-usa.com>
	message dated "Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:00:46 -0800"
Date: Thu, 16 Nov 2006 13:14:01 -0500
Message-ID: <19583.1163700841@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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"Craig A. James" <cjames@modgraph-usa.com> writes:
> OOM?  Can you give me a quick pointer to what this acronym stands for
> and how I can reconfigure it?

See "Linux Memory Overcommit" at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/kernel-resources.html#AEN18128
or try googling for "OOM kill" for non-Postgres-specific coverage.

> 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.  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. 

No kidding :-(.  The default behavior in Linux is extremely unfortunate.

			regards, tom lane