Re: [HACKERS] "out of free buffers: time to abort" message?

> I have just checked in a little test script that I've been using for a
> while (since before 6.5) to pound on lesser-used paths in the optimizer.
> It's called src/test/regress/regressplans.sh, and it just runs the
> regular regression tests with different PGOPTIONS settings to force
> varying plan type selections.
> 
> The reason I bring it up is that recently the thing has been failing
> with backend messages "ERROR: out of free buffers: time to abort" (often
> followed by a core dump) at what seem to be random places.  Running the
> regression test standalone with the same PGOPTIONS settings does not
> reproduce the error, and in fact it happens to different tests if you
> run the script over and over.
> 
> I have also sometimes seen failures out of mdblindwrt, apparently trying
> to dump a dirty buffer for a no-longer-existing database.
> 
> Anyone have any idea how to debug this, or what might be triggering it?
> The best theory I've come up with is that it's got something to do with
> the repeated destruction and re-creation of the "regression" database.
> But usually the failure occurs during the later tests within a
> particular regression set, so you'd think any effects of destroying
> the previous incarnation of the DB would be long gone.

If you restart the postmaster for every test, does the problem go away?


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