Re: Limit allocated memory per session

On Thu, Oct 01, 2009 at 10:35:55AM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> daveg <daveg(at)sonic(dot)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 However, ulimit() is documented as superceded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

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David Gould daveg(at)sonic(dot)net 510 536 1443 510 282 0869
If simplicity worked, the world would be overrun with insects.