Re: pg_dump / pg_dumpall / memory issues

Ericson Smith <eric@did-it.com> writes:
> As you can imagine, at times the backup process (or in fact any large
> query that dominates the cache), tends to spike up the load pretty
> severely. At some point, we experimented with more shared memory, but
> that actually decreased overall performance, as was discussed here
> earlier.

> What can we do to alleviate this problem?

There was a great deal of discussion back in July 2000 about throttling
the rate at which pg_dump pulls down data.  You might check the
archives, and also look in pg_dump.c for the comments about it therein.
No one seemed to be able to come up with a great answer that time
around, but perhaps you can find a way that works.

            regards, tom lane