Thread: pg_restore : out of memory

Hi,

I am trying to restore a table out of a dump, and I get an 'out of
memory' error.

The table I want to restore is 5GB big.

Here is the exact message :

admaxg@goules:/home/backup-sas$ pg_restore -F c -a -d axabas -t cabmnt
axabas.dmp
pg_restore: [archiver (db)] Error while PROCESSING TOC:
pg_restore: [archiver (db)] Error from TOC entry 5492; 0 43701 TABLE
DATA cabmnt axabas
pg_restore: [archiver (db)] COPY failed: ERROR:  out of memory
DETAIL:  Failed on request of size 40.
CONTEXT:  COPY cabmnt, line 9038995: "FHSJ    CPTGEN    RE
200806_004    6.842725E7    6.842725E7    \N    7321100    1101
\N
00016    \N    \N    \N    \N    \N    \N    -1278.620..."
WARNING: errors ignored on restore: 1

Looking at the os level, the process is effectively eating all memory
(incl. swap), that is around 24 GB...

So, here is my question : is pg_restore supposed to eat all memory ? and
is there something I can do to prevent that ?

Thanks,

Franck

Franck Routier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am trying to restore a table out of a dump, and I get an 'out of
> memory' error.

- Operating system?
- PostgreSQL version?
- PostgreSQL configuration - work_mem, shared_buffers, etc?

> So, here is my question : is pg_restore supposed to eat all memory ?

No, but PostgreSQL's backends will if you tell them there's more memory
available than there really is.

> and
> is there something I can do to prevent that ?

Adjust your PostgreSQL configuration to ensure that shared_buffers,
work_mem, etc are appropriate for the system and don't tell Pg to use
more memory than is actually available.

pg_restore isn't using up your memory. The PostgreSQL backend is.

--
Craig Ringer