Re: Postgres server crash

"Craig A. James" <cjames@modgraph-usa.com> writes:
> OOM?  Can you give me a quick pointer to what this acronym stands for
> and how I can reconfigure it?

See "Linux Memory Overcommit" at
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/kernel-resources.html#AEN18128
or try googling for "OOM kill" for non-Postgres-specific coverage.

> It sounds like a "feature" old UNIX
> systems like SGI IRIX had, where the system would allocate virtual
> memory that it didn't really have, then kill your process if you tried
> to use it.  I.e. malloc() would never return NULL even if swap space
> was over allocated.  Is this what you're talking about?  Having this
> enabled on a server is deadly for reliability.

No kidding :-(.  The default behavior in Linux is extremely unfortunate.

            regards, tom lane