Re: 8.1beta, SunOS and shmget

On Mon, 29 Aug 2005, Tom Lane wrote:

> "Sergey E. Koposov" <math@sai.msu.ru> writes:
>> So, are the shared memory requirements increased for 8.1 ?
>
> Yes; mostly from 2PC support I think.  Try reducing
> max_prepared_transactions.  (We might want to debate whether the default
> setting should be smaller than 50 --- it looks to me like that's adding
> over 700K to the default shared memory block size.)

In fact, 0 might be reasonable default. Not many people need 2PC.

Those that do, are arguably better off if they're forced to read the 
manual they might not otherwise read :). The manual can then give some 
good advice, like that the application server becomes a critical 
component with 2PC. And perhaps discuss alternatives application designs 
to avoid 2PC in the first place.

50 is a bad default anyway. If you have max_connections connections that 
simultanously issue a prepare, you need to have 
max_prepared_transactions >= max_connections. You can get away with a 
smaller value most of the time, but if for example another resource 
manager "clogs" for a moment, so that the transaction manager can't finish 
any transactions, you can easily reach the limit.

Assuming the application server doesn't reuse a connection before 2nd 
phase commit (I don't have any hard data on this, but I believe it to be 
the norm. Please correct me if I'm wrong), max_prepared_transactions 
>= max_connections will make the new incoming transactions queue until a 
connection becomes available, while max_prepared_transactions < 
max_connections make the incoming transactions fail at prepare.

- Heikki