In response to Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@xxxxxxxxx>: > On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 12:56 PM, Alan McKay <alan.mckay@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > Is there any way to limit a query to a certain amount of RAM and / or > > certain runtime? > > > > i.e. automatically kill it if it exceeds either boundary? > > > > We've finally narrowed down our system crashes and have a smoking gun, > > but no way to fix it in the immediate term. This sort of limit would > > really help us. > > Generally speaking work_mem limits ram used. What are your > non-default postgresql.conf settings? work_mem limits memory usage _per_sort_. A big query can easily have many sorts. Each sort will be limited to work_mem memory usage, but the total could be much higher. The only way I can think is to set a per-process limit in the OS and allow the OS to kill a process when it gets out of hand. Not ideal, though. -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/ -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general