Apologies, I didn't notice that I was replying off-list.
On 27 June 2011 00:29, Dave Coventry <dgcoventry@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 26 June 2011 23:37, John R Pierce <pierce@hogranch.com> wrote:
>> I didn't read the whole thread, but is this a Linux server? Linux has a
>> horrible feature, the "Out of Memory Killer", which kills off processes when
>> the system is low on memory.
>>
>> the OOM-Killer usually leaves log entries in DMESG and maybe
>> /var/log/messages
>
> Yes, it's a Ubuntu 10.10 server. I don't actually see anything in
> dmesg or in /var/log/messages that would indicate indiscriminate
> culling of processes.
>
>> If in fact its the OOM killer, you should probably lower your WORK_MEM and
>> SHARED_BUFFERS and maybe MAINTENANCE_WORK_MEM in postgresql.conf
>
> Thanks for the suggestions. I have pulled them all down to their
> recommended minimums:
>
> work_mem: 64kB
> shared_buffers: 128kB
> maintenance_work_mem: 1MB
>
> I'll see if that makes any difference.
>