Re: PostgreSQL 8.0.6 crash

Tom Lane wrote:

>"Mark Woodward" <pgsql@mohawksoft.com> writes:
>  
>
>>Still, I would say that is is extremly bad behavior for not having
>>stats, wouldn't you think?
>>    
>>
>
>Think of it as a kernel bug.
>
>  
>
>>>Meanwhile, I'd strongly recommend turning off OOM kill.  That's got to
>>>be the single worst design decision in the entire Linux kernel.
>>>      
>>>
>
>  
>
>>How is this any different than the FreeBSD having a default 512M process
>>size limit? On FreeBSD, the process would have been killed earlier.
>>    
>>
>
>No, the process would have been politely told it was out of memory, and
>would have told you the same.  If the kernel's way of notifying a
>process that it's out of memory is SIGKILL, there is not a damn thing
>that we can do to operate robustly.
>  
>

And we have docco on it: 
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/kernel-resources.html#AEN18105 
which I assume is still current. Back in October I mentioned the OOM 
killer to Andrew Morton - his reaction was a very pained look and a curt 
admonition: "turn it off".

cheers

andrew