thanks for replies everyone
platform is Debian 2.6 btw
Heres how i got temp fix (i dont have much background in postgresql, so dont
kick me hard):
few months ago old admin upgraded to 6GB of ram and increased shared_buffers
in posgresql.conf from 16384 to 393216 (3GB)
He also modifed sysctl to look like this:
-----
kernel.shmmax=4294967296
kernel.shmall=536870912
-----
I looked in top command, and dmesg, both indicate 6GB of ram. So I started
gradually increase "sysctl -w kernel.shmmax=xxx"
during that i was checking out /proc/sys/kernel/shmmax
it was keeping up with corresponding values until i reached that number -
4294967296, it was showing "0" instead. so i lowered it to 4200000000,
about highest number that would not null that /proc value.
Still wouldnt start :( but with different error now, didnt save it
After that i decreased shared_buffers back to 16384, and it worked. Didnt
mess with it anymore for right now, don't want to experiment on live server.
Old admin is not around anymore, so I sort of inherited responsibility for
the server, but I don't know much about postgresql yet.
So, whats the optimum values for this amount of memory as far as SHMALL, MAX
and shared_buffers?
Database size is about 115GB, daily traffic is about 800MB.
Thanks alot
-Nik