On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 11:21 -0400, Tom Lane wrote: > Sven Willenberger <sven@xxxxxxx> writes: > > ERROR: out of memory > > DETAIL: Failed on request of size 536870910. > > That's a server-side failure ... > > > Again, if I log in as myself and try to run > > the command vaccumdb -a -z it fails; if I su to root and repeat it works > > fine. I am trying to narrow this down to a PostgreSQL issue vs FreeBSD > > issue. > > That's fairly hard to believe, assuming that you are talking to the same > server in both cases (I have seen trouble reports that turned out to be > because the complainant was accidentally using two different servers...) > The ulimit the backend is running under couldn't change depending on > where the client is su'd to. > > Is it possible that you've got per-user configuration settings that > affect this, like a different maintenance_mem value for the root user? > > regards, tom lane > I have done some more tests and tried to keep the results of vacuumdb distinct from connecting to the backend (psql -U pgsql ...) and running vaccum analyze. Apparently the hopping back and forth from both methods interfered with my original interpretations of what appeared to be happening. Anyway, here is what I see: First test psql connection version: psql then vacuum analyze => works fine whether the current unix user is root or plain user. (ran this a couple times via new psql connections to verify). Then quit psql and move to command line vacuumdb => whether running as su -l pgsql -c "vacuumdb -a -z" (or specifying a dbname instead of all) or directly as a user the out of memory error occurs. If I then connect via psql to the backend and try to run vacuum analyze I receive an out of memory error. This last connection to psql after a failed vacuumdb was confabulating my interpretations earlier of the error being based on unix user. top shows: PID USERNAME PRI NICE SIZE RES STATE C TIME WCPU CPU COMMAND 6754 pgsql 4 0 602M 88688K sbwait 0 0:03 0.00% 0.00% postgres until I disconnect the psql session. I can then psql again and the same error happens (out of memory) and top shows the same again. At this point I am not sure if it is a memory issue of vacuumdb, vacuum itself, or the FreeBSD memory management system. Again, if enough time passes (or some other events) since I last try vacuumdb, then running vacuum [verbose][analyze] via a psql connection works fine. Sven ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx