Re: [HACKERS] PC Week Labs benchmark results

I wrote:
> Timothy Dyck <Timothy_Dyck@zd.com> writes:
>> 8. Can't start postmaster with more than 65536 buffers as I get a "FATAL
>> 1:  couldn't initialize shared buffer pool Hash Tbl". Variable overflow?

> Probably.  Hadn't occurred to me that we need to check for a sane upper
> bound on the number of buffers, but I guess we do.  (You do realize that
> would be half a gig of in-memory buffers, right?  If you've actually got
> that much RAM, it's probably better to let the OS use it for general-
> purpose disk buffers instead of dedicating it all to Postgres.)

Just FYI, this is now fixed for 7.0.  Turns out there was a bogus
hard-wired assumption about the maximum size of the hashtable for
shared buffers.

I still doubt that anyone really *needs* more than 64K buffers ;-)
... but it will work if you have the RAM.
        regards, tom lane