Re: BUG #2225: Backend crash -- BIG table

"Patrick Rotsaert" <patrick.rotsaert@arrowup.be> writes:
> At the time of the crash, the server logs:
>     LOG:  server process (PID 21815) was terminated by signal 9

You're running on a Linux machine with memory overcommit enabled.
Turn that off, or nothing will ever work very reliably --- the OOM
killer is entirely capable of zapping innocent processes that have
nothing to do with the one eating too much memory; and even when it
kills the right process, "kill -9" is not IMHO an acceptable way for
the system to tell a process it can't have any more memory.  See
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/kernel-resources.html#AEN18105

            regards, tom lane