Received: from maia.hub.org (maia-3.hub.org [200.46.204.243]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E2488B5DC0A for ; Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:09:42 -0300 (ADT) Received: from mail.postgresql.org ([200.46.204.86]) by maia.hub.org (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.243]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 06922-02 for ; Mon, 12 Sep 2011 22:09:32 +0000 (UTC) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.6 Received: from mxtip01-umsystem-out.um.umsystem.edu (mxtip01-umsystem-out.um.umsystem.edu [209.106.229.49]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 14657B5DC01 for ; Mon, 12 Sep 2011 19:09:31 -0300 (ADT) X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Filtered: true X-IronPort-Anti-Spam-Result: Av4EACWCbk7RauQ0/2dsb2JhbABCp3J4gVIBAQU4QRALGAklDwI4AQ0GDQEFAgEBthKIf4ZuBIdtkGUJjBw Received: from um-nsmtpin1.um.umsystem.edu ([209.106.228.52]) by mxtip01-mizzou-out.um.umsystem.edu with ESMTP; 12 Sep 2011 17:09:31 -0500 Received: from um-tsmtpout1.um.umsystem.edu ([209.106.228.23]) by um-nsmtpin1.um.umsystem.edu with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:09:20 -0500 Received: from [128.206.129.163] ([128.206.129.163]) by um-tsmtpout1.um.umsystem.edu over TLS secured channel with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.4675); Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:09:19 -0500 Message-ID: <4E6E830E.30701@missouri.edu> Date: Mon, 12 Sep 2011 17:09:18 -0500 From: Robert Schnabel User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.2; WOW64; rv:6.0.2) Gecko/20110902 Thunderbird/6.0.2 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Scott Marlowe CC: pgsql-performance Subject: Re: Allow sorts to use more available memory References: <4E6E426D.7060405@missouri.edu> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-OriginalArrivalTime: 12 Sep 2011 22:09:19.0694 (UTC) FILETIME=[9E9CB6E0:01CC7198] X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=-1.9 tagged_above=-10 required=5 tests=BAYES_00=-1.9 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 201109/166 X-Sequence-Number: 44942 On 9/12/2011 3:58 PM, Scott Marlowe wrote: > On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 11:33 AM, Robert Schnabel > wrote: >> The recent "data warehouse" thread made me think about how I use work_mem >> for some of my big queries. So I tried SET work_mem = '4GB' for a session >> and got >> >> ERROR: 4194304 is outside the valid range for parameter "work_mem" (64 .. >> 2097151) > Ubuntu 10.10, pgsql 8.4.8: > > smarlowe=# set work_mem='1000GB'; > SET Ok, so is this a limitation related to the Windows implementation? And getting back to the to-do list entry and reading the related posts, it appears that even if you could set work_mem that high it would only use 2GB anyway. I guess that was the second part of my question. Is that true?