Re: ERROR: invalid memory alloc request size, and others

On Tue, 2007-01-09 at 13:38, Jonathan Hedstrom wrote:
> We recently upgraded from 8.1.4 to 8.2.0 on Fedora Core 6, and are now
> seeing a few rather ominous-looking messages.
>
> The problem started with this one, during an update involving a rather
> complex view:
>
> ERROR: invalid memory alloc request size 1174405120
>
> Then, when attempting to re-run the same update statement:
>
> PANIC: cannot abort transaction 8682091, it was already committed
>
> and then again:
>
> PANIC: right sibling's left-link doesn't match
>
>
> I ran reindex on the tables in question, which fixed the problem in the
> short term and allowed the update to complete, but then I got the memory
> allocation error and these overnight:
>
> ERROR: invalid page header in block 3362 of relation
> "index_clin_dal_staff_id"
> ERROR: invalid page header in block 2325 of relation "index_clin_dal_batch"
>
> I will gladly provide additional information to help track down and
> hopefully solve this problem, but at this point I'm not sure what else
> to include.

First step, update to 8.2.1, it came out yesterday, and there were a few
bugs that got stomped. Don't know if they are related to your problem,
but having the latest version is usually a "good thing".

Also, schedule some maintenance window for your server to run memtest86
and possibly something to check for bad blocks on your drives. Often
errors like the invalid memory alloc request size you're seeing, and the
link doesn't match one are caused by bad hardware.