Re: [HACKERS] memory problems in copying large table to STDOUT

Martin Weinberg <weinberg@osprey.astro.umass.edu> writes:
> I've been struggling to copy a large table (200 million
> records, 60GB) to tape using:
>    psql -qc "copy psc to STDOUT;" Winter99 | dd of=/dev/st0 bs=32k
> After processing about 10 million records (this varies), I
> get:
>   FATAL 1:  Memory exhausted in AllocSetAlloc()

Hmm.  What is the exact declaration of the table?

The only explanation I can think of offhand is that the output
conversion function for one of the column types is leaking memory...
copy.c itself looks to be pretty careful not to.
        regards, tom lane