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

Scott Marlowe wrote:
> 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".
>
>
I noticed that 8.2.1 had been released shortly after I sent off my
initial email. I've upgraded and hopefully that will take care of it.
> 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.

I'll try to run these tests soon, but this is a production server, so
scheduling downtime takes a bit of planning. I should also mention that
this is the exact same server we've been running 8.1.4 on for about 6
months without a problem (doing the same nightly update causing the
problem etc), so I'm a bit skeptical about having suddenly developed
hardware issues.

Thanks,
Jonathan