Re: Out of memory errors on OS X

Tom Lane wrote:

>Jeffrey Melloy <jmelloy@visualdistortion.org> writes:
>
>
>>I have a couple users trying to install Postgres on OS X.  To the best
>>of my knowledge, both of them are using 7.4.5/10.3.5, and got identical
>>errors while trying to init the database:
>>
>>
>
>They need to increase the system's shmmax limit (sysctl kern.sysv.shmmax,
>which is only 4MB by default).  You can run one postmaster that way ...
>not very well, but it will run ... but you definitely can't start two.
>I surmise that they already had one postmaster running?
>
>In OSX 10.3 I believe that the recommended way to fix this is to edit
>/etc/rc's setting, and then reboot.  AFAICS there is no reason not to
>raise shmmax to 50% or so of physical RAM.
>
>I have asked Apple about using a saner default for shmmax, but a few
>more complaints in their bug system wouldn't hurt.
>
>            regards, tom lane
>
>
I'll pass it on, though I'm wondering why they would have that problem
and others (myself included) don't.

Jeff