> Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:
>
>> * Tom Lane (tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us) wrote:
>> > Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu> writes:
>> > > It doesn't seem like a bad idea to have a max_memory parameter that
>> if a
>> > > backend ever exceeded it would immediately abort the current
>> > > transaction.
>> >
>> > See ulimit (or local equivalent).
>>
>> As much as setting ulimit in shell scripts is fun, I have to admit that
>> I really don't see it happening very much.
>
> For one thing it requires admin access to the startup scripts to arrange
> this.
> And it's always cluster-wide.
>
> Having a GUC parameter would mean it could be set per-session. Even if the
> GUC
> parameter were just implemented by calling setrlimit it might be useful.
>
I don't think it needs a new GUC parameter, just having hashagg respect
work_mem would fix the problem.