Re: [HACKERS] Re: ERROR: out of free buffers: time to abort !

Tom Lane wrote:

> >> I am seeing the following error during a DB rebuild.

> >> ERROR:  out of free buffers: time to abort !
> >>
> > This problem disappears when I up the number of shared mem buffers
> > with the -B flag from default of 64 to 256.
>
> That's the message you get if all the disk buffers are marked as
> "in use" (ref count > 0) so that there is noplace to read in another
> database page.  I fixed several nasty buffer-ref-count-leakage bugs
> a couple of months ago, so I think this problem may be gone in current
> sources.  (I'd appreciate it if you'd try this test case as soon as
> we are ready for 7.0 beta...)

Great.  Thanks again, Tom.

> In the meantime, upping the number of buffers will at least postpone the
> problem.  But I'm worried that it may not solve it completely --- you
> may still find that the error occurs after you've been running long
> enough.

Can I postpone/workaround the problem by periodic server restarts to reset
the counts?  Or is this a persistent thing across server restarts?

Cheers,
Ed Loehr