[GENERAL] PostgreSQL's vacuumdb fails to allocate memory for non-root users

[Sven Willenberger]

On Wed, 2005-06-29 at 14:59 -0400, Vivek Khera wrote:
> On Jun 29, 2005, at 9:01 AM, Sven Willenberger wrote:
> 
> > Unix user root (and any psql superuser) the vacuum runs fine. It is  
> > when
> > the unix user is non-root (e.g. su -l pgsql -c "vacuumdb -a -z") that
> > this memory error occurs. All users use the "default" class for
> > login.conf purposes which has not been modified from its installed
> > settings. Any ideas on how to a) troubleshoot this or b) fix this  
> > (if it
> > is something obvious that I just cannot see).
> 
> This doesn't make sense: the actual command is executed by the  
> backend postgres server, so the uid of the client program doens't  
> make a bit of difference.
> 
> You need to see exactly who is generating that error.  It certainly  
> is not the Pg backend.
> 
The issue being tied to a certain "login" user has been negated by
further testing (the illusion that it was based on user happened as a
result of the order in which I ran tests to try and find out what was
going on ) -- it does seem tied to invoking vacuumdb at this point. As a
point of clarification, when maxdsiz and dfldsiz are set, those values
are per "process" not per "user", correct? Something I have noticed,
when the memory error occurs during the psql session (after a failed
vacuumdb attempt) the memory stays at 600+MB in top (under size) until
the psql session is closed -- that may just be the way top reports it
though.

Sven

Sven