Re: massive memory allocation until machine crashes

Alexander Elgert wrote:
> Hello,
>
> given is a postgres database in version
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> PostgreSQL 7.4.8 on i686-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 3.2.2

Upgrade to 7.4.16 as soon as is convenient - you're missing 8 sets of
bug-fixes.

> and there is a table "visit" with 26 million tuples using 8 GB of space

> The table is from ofbiz and for logging accesses to the webapplication.
> Running a delete command which deletes all but a few tuples causes the
> postmaster to allocate memory:
> ---    10903 postgres  25   0  214M 213M 10412 R    95.3 10.5   6:07
> postmaster
>
> Until all memory and swap is gone - that was 1.4GB of top:SIZE

Do you have any triggers or foreign keys on this table? If so, each of
those will need to be tracked. There may be a memory-leak in 7.4.8
that's since been fixed, probably worth checking the release notes at
the end of the manual.

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd