Re: crashing Xeon?

Hi Joshua
>
> What version of the kernel? If you are not running 2.4.20 or above you
> could have issues.
> There is issues with certain ethernet cards where the system will "go to
> sleep". There are
> also issues with the EXT3 filesystem that can cause ugly things.

umm, 2.4-19, as distributed by SuSE 8.1.
(8.2 distributes the 2.4-20 kernel).
Filesystem: xfs

Greetings, Hubert
>
> J
>
>
> Hubert Fröhlich wrote:
>
>> Hi list,
>>
>> I have been using PostgreSQL for a GIS database on different Linux
>> (mostly SuSE 8.1) boxes, and so far everything fine.
>>
>> Now I tried to set up a "bigger" database server
>> (HP ProLiant DL 380-G3, 2x Intel Pentium4-Xeon, 2.8 GHz
>> 4 GB memory and a RAID 5 system with ca. 500 GB diskspace) under SuSE 8.1
>>
>> When compiling PostgreSQL 7.3.4, (GNU Make version 3.79.1) everything
>> went fine. Then I wanted to set up several database instances and fill
>> them from SQL dumps (1 ...1.5 GB each) and lots of indices (btree and
>> rtree).
>>
>> I monitored the filling process. When reading data, all was fine. When
>> setting up the indices after reading the data, I managed to crash the
>> system (?!) several times (not regularly, but mostly related with
>> heavy load on the box (e.g. zipping large files while filling the
>> databases). Normally, this should result only in slowing down the
>> machine (may be VERY slow) but I see the postmaster processes lose CPU
>> percentage while the system load (xload) even increases until
>> everything (not only the database) is blocked.
>>
>> When doing the same things for our older Athlon single-processor
>> boxes, everything went slowly, but fine
>>
>> a) The dumps come from 7.1.3 databases. This should not be any
>> problem, I think.
>> b) Normally, I would expect only the application (i.e. the database to
>> crash, but not the system.
>> c) Do I run into some multiprocessor problems? Missed some compiler
>> option providing thread-safe processing?
>>
>> Is there anybody who can give me some hint on fixing the problem? Any
>> help will be greatly appreciated.
>>
>> Regards,
>>
>> Hubert

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr.-Ing. Hubert Fröhlich
Bezirksfinanzdirektion München
Alexandrastr. 3, D-80538 München, GERMANY
Tel. :+49 (0)89 / 2190 - 2980
Fax :+49 (0)89 / 2190 - 2459
hubert(dot)froehlich(at)bvv(dot)bayern(dot)de