On Thu, Oct 01, 2009 at 10:35:55AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote: > daveg <da...@sonic.net> writes: > > I'd like to propose adding a new GUC to limit the amount of memory a backend > > can allocate for its own use. > > Use ulimit.
That was my initial thought too. However, ulimit() is documented as superceded by setrlimit(). Which has the option RLIMIT_DATA to limit the size of the data segment. Perfect! Except, RLIMIT_DATA does not appear to work on linux. The call succeeds and the new value can even be read back with getrlimit(), but it does not seem to do anything to actually limit the memory allocated. I tested this on SuSE 11: kernel 2.6.25, and Ubuntu Intrepid: kernel 2.6.28. Setting RLIMIT_AS to limit the total address space for a process works as expected. However this seems undesireable for postgresql as it can also cause stack expansion to fail, which would then force a general restart. Also, this limit would interact with the buffercache size setting as it includes the shared address space as well. -dg -- David Gould da...@sonic.net 510 536 1443 510 282 0869 If simplicity worked, the world would be overrun with insects. -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
