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Thread: vacuumdb out of memory error

vacuumdb out of memory error

From
"Matthew T. O'Connor"
Date:
Hello all,

I run a nightly "vacuumdb -a -z" on my production server.  The output of
the command is emailed to me every night.  Today while checking my email
I received this:

vacuumdb: vacuuming database "postgres"
vacuumdb: vacuuming of database "postgres" failed: ERROR:  out of memory
DETAIL:  Failed on request of size 167772156.

Now this concerned me because I know that vacuum errors are often the
sign of data corruption, however the postgres database on my server has
no tables in it.  I logged into my server and reran the vacuumdb -a -z
command and it went though with no problem.  I also checked my log file
and it shows that there have been 25 out of memory errors on my server
today.

My question is:  Is this normal?  Should this make me nervous that I
have a problem?

Thanks,

Matt

ps: Some details:
I run autovacuum, but do the nightly vacuumdb as a sort of poor man's
maintenance window.
postgres=# select version();
                                                   version
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 PostgreSQL 8.1.0 on i686-redhat-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC)
3.3.3 20040412 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.3-7)

Re: vacuumdb out of memory error

From
Tom Lane
Date:
"Matthew T. O'Connor" <matthew@zeut.net> writes:
> no tables in it.  I logged into my server and reran the vacuumdb -a -z
> command and it went though with no problem.  I also checked my log file
> and it shows that there have been 25 out of memory errors on my server
> today.

> My question is:  Is this normal?  Should this make me nervous that I
> have a problem?

Yeah ...

>  PostgreSQL 8.1.0 on i686-redhat-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC)
> 3.3.3 20040412 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.3-7)

... and this should definitely make you nervous.  We don't release
update versions for idle amusement.  Get onto 8.1.3 and see if it keeps
happening.

            regards, tom lane

Re: vacuumdb out of memory error

From
"Matthew T. O'Connor"
Date:
Tom Lane wrote:
> "Matthew T. O'Connor" <matthew@zeut.net> writes:
>
>>  PostgreSQL 8.1.0 on i686-redhat-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC)
>> 3.3.3 20040412 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.3-7)
>>
>
> ... and this should definitely make you nervous.  We don't release
> update versions for idle amusement.  Get onto 8.1.3 and see if it keeps
> happening.

Already in process.  Will keep the list posted if there continue to be
problems.  However, I looked though the 8.1.3 change log and didn't see
anything particularly relevant.


Matt