Re: VACUUM FULL freezes

On Wed, May 22, 2013 at 8:49 AM, RDNikeAir <ryan(dot)dupuis(at)excelitas(dot)com> wrote:
> I have a database that is on a RAID5 machine that is almost out of memory
> (277GB of 330GB used). I have deleted some data and run the VACUUM FULL
> command, but after a few hours gave me the error message "Server closed the
> connection unexpectedly. This probably means the server terminated
> abnormally before or while processing the request. The connection to the
> server was lost. Attempting reset: Failed." I know that the server did not
> fail, so i assume that this timed out. The server is running version 7.4 (i
> know it's an old version).
>
> The database has several tables, but 99% of the data is located in a single
> table. My fear is that there's not enough system memory left to perform the
> full vacuum since it's all contained in a single table.
>
> Any ideas?

Anything in the postgres logs about it? I'm guessing you've got some
corruption somewhere that's causing the backend to crash during a
vacuum full. Whether or not the backend crashed or the connection
timed out, there should be something about it in the postgres logs.