Re: Out of memory errors on OS X

Jeffrey Melloy <jmelloy(at)visualdistortion(dot)org> writes:
> I have a couple users trying to install Postgres on OS X. To the best
> of my knowledge, both of them are using 7.4.5/10.3.5, and got identical
> errors while trying to init the database:

They need to increase the system's shmmax limit (sysctl kern.sysv.shmmax,
which is only 4MB by default). You can run one postmaster that way ...
not very well, but it will run ... but you definitely can't start two.
I surmise that they already had one postmaster running?

In OSX 10.3 I believe that the recommended way to fix this is to edit
/etc/rc's setting, and then reboot. AFAICS there is no reason not to
raise shmmax to 50% or so of physical RAM.

I have asked Apple about using a saner default for shmmax, but a few
more complaints in their bug system wouldn't hurt.

regards, tom lane