Regarding the coverage of huge pages (added in 9.4):
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.4/static/kernel-resources.html#LINUX-HUGE-PAGES
This section does not call out the need to add the PostgreSQL user to a
group which has been given access to shared memory by setting its number as
vm.hugetlb_shm_group, nor that the "memlock" limit needs to be raised or set
to unlimited for this user.
If these are not done, postgres would need to be running as a user with
CAP_IPC_LOCK (e.g. root) to take advantage of large pages. These
restrictions exist because reserving a large page locks it in physical
memory, which can lead to resource exhaustion.
Compare http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/large-page-support.html which
mentions both of these issues (although it does not show adding the user to
the group, just setting the group as vm.hugetlb_shm_group).
An example command sequence:
groupadd hugepages
gpasswd -a postgres hugepages
id postgres [user finds "hugepages" group has id 1234]
sysctl -w vm.hugetlb_shm_group=1234
sysctl -w vm.nr_hugepages=5678 [as estimated in documentation]
Edit /etc/sysctl.conf and add:
vm.hugetlb_shm_group=1234
vm.nr_hugepages=5678
Add to /etc/security/limits.conf:
@hugepages soft memlock unlimited
@hugepages hard memlock unlimited
In some cases (e.g. Debian's start-stop-daemon) the command "ulimit -l
unlimited" may be needed in the PostgreSQL startup scripts instead of the
limits.conf edit, because PAM limits are not called for those scripts.
Hope this helps,
--
Laurence "GreenReaper" Parry
http://greenreaper.co.uk - http://wikifur.com - http://flayrah.com
"Eternity lies ahead of us, and behind. Have you drunk your fill?"