Re: performance problem

> > > That's VERY high. When postgresql has to manage a lot of buffers it
> > > actually is slower than letting the kernel in Linux or BSD do it for
you.

I am confused. In this tutorial (by Bruce Momjian)
http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/hw_performance/node8.html
it says: "As a start for tuning, use 25% of RAM for cache size, and 2-4% for
sort size."

If I've got 2g of RAM then that is 2097152k. 25% of that = 524288k. So the
tutorial is saying that 524288k is a good starting point for shared buffers
with this amount of RAM.

If each buffer is 8k
(http://candle.pha.pa.us/main/writings/pgsql/hw_performance/node3.html)
then that would be 65536 buffers.

I'm pretty sure that that is a lot more than I need to cache every tuple in
my database. Now everytime I see someone comment on this list about
appropriate numbers for shared buffers they say something like "(65536
buffers is) VERY high. Now since I obviously don't need that much shared
cache so I am not concerned but it seems to me that one of the following
must be true.

My calculations here are wrong.
or The tutorial is not accurate in saying that 25% is a good starting point.
or The people making comments that 65536 is "VERY high" are wrong.

Am I just confused or does this make sense?

> > Even if you've got the memory to spare? Does postgres actually slow
down
> > just because it's slower to manager a lot of them just or because you're
> > taking the memory away from the kernel so the kernel has to swap more?
>
> The latter, mainly, I think. Also you *really* don't want your kernel
> to swap out any of your shared buffers, which can happen if they take
> up a significant portion of RAM...

So if I'm not swapping at all and I've got over 1g of unused memory then I'm
probably ok even with the very high buffer setting? (Although I will
probably reduce it anyway since it is unnecessary).

rg