Re: crashing Xeon?

On 7 Aug 2003 at 14:04, Hubert Fröhlich wrote:
> 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.
> Is there anybody who can give me some hint on fixing the problem? Any
> help will be greatly appreciated.

Just some suggestions.

1. Is there anything in the postgresql logs reported?
2. Is your sort memory too high?
3. While you create index on large data, do you see exponential growth in disk
space usage? Even if disk space is plenty on the server, partitioning etc.
might cause problems. Ideally shouldn't but a check would be good.

HTH

Bye
Shridhar

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