Tom Lane <tgl@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Ugh. I don't recall exactly when Apple got around to > including ipcs, but I guess it wasn't in 10.3.9. Your > problem is that you're flying blind because you cannot > tell what's going on in shared memory. > > What I suspect is that there's an unused shared memory > segment sitting there (perhaps left over from a failed > initdb) and eating a sufficiently large fraction of SHMALL > that there's no room for another. If correct, then > rebooting should make it go away and let you initdb. Hi Tom, I get the same result trying to initdb after rebooting, the end of which is: fixing permissions on existing directory /Library/PostgreSQL8/data ... ok creating subdirectories ... ok selecting default max_connections ... 10 selecting default shared_buffers/max_fsm_pages ... 400kB/20000 creating configuration files ... ok creating template1 database in /Library/PostgreSQL8/data/base/1 ... FATAL: could not create shared memory segment: Cannot allocate memory DETAIL: Failed system call was shmget(key=2, size=1646592, 03600). HINT: This error usually means that PostgreSQL's request for a shared memory segment exceeded available memory or swap space. To reduce the request size (currently 1646592 bytes), reduce PostgreSQL's shared_buffers parameter (currently 50) and/or its max_connections parameter (currently 10). The PostgreSQL documentation contains more information about shared memory configuration. child process exited with exit code 1 initdb: removing contents of data directory "/Library/PostgreSQL8/data" ---- Does the size=1646592 bit mean it's ignoring my /etc/sysctl.conf file? > Since you haven't got ipcrm either, there's basically no > other way to get rid of an unwanted shmem segment :-( > > You should think about upgrading to 10.4.x btw --- for > Postgres admin purposes, having ipcs and ipcrm available > is alone worth the price of admission. And it does seem > they've improved the OS's performance in various ways too. Out of my hands, it's not my computer to upgrade. <shrug> Not even sure if a g4 will run 10.4.x, will it? Cheers! Joe