> Monitoring the processes using top reveals that the total amount of > memory used slowly increases during the test. When reaching insert > number 40000, or somewhere around that, memory is exhausted, and the the > systems begins to swap. Each of the postmaster processes seem to use a > constant amount of memory, but the total memory usage increases all the > same. So . . . . what's using the memory? It doesn't sound like PG is using it, so is it your Java app? If it's the Java app, then it could be that your code isn't remembering to do things like close statements, or perhaps the max heap size is set too large for your hardware. With early RHEL3 kernels there was also a quirky interaction with Sun's JVM where the system swaps itself to death even when less than half the physical memory is in use. If its neither PG nor Java, then perhaps you're misinterpreting the results of top. Remember that the "free" memory on a properly running Unix box that's been running for a while should hover just a bit above zero due to normal caching; read up on the 'free' command to see the actual memory utilization. -- Mark
