On Wed, 22 Nov 2006 15:28:12 +0100 Markus Schaber <schabi@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > Hi, Steinar, > > Steinar H. Gunderson wrote: > > On Wed, Nov 22, 2006 at 11:17:23AM +0100, Markus Schaber wrote: > >> The Backend allocates gigs of memory (we've set sort_mem to 1 > >> gig), and then starts spilling out more Gigs of temporary data to > >> the disk. > > > > How much RAM is in the server? Remember that sort_mem is _per > > sort_, so if you have multiple sorts, it might allocate several > > multiples of the amount you set up. > > That one machine has 16 Gigs of ram, and about 10 Gigs tend to be > "free" / part of the Linux blocklayer cache. > > The temporary data is not swapping, it's the Postgres on-disk sort > algorithm. Are you actually running a query where you have a GB of data you need to sort? If not I fear you may be causing the system to swap by setting it this high. --------------------------------- Frank Wiles <frank@xxxxxxxxx> http://www.wiles.org ---------------------------------
