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

[Douglas McNaught]

Sven Willenberger <sven at dmv.com> writes:

> FreeBSD 5.4-Release
> PostgreSQL 8.0.3
>
> I noticed that the nightly cron consisting of a vacuumdb was failing due
> to "unable to allocate memory". I do have maintenance_mem set at 512MB,
> and the /boot/loader.conf file sets the max datasize to 1GB (verified by
> limit). The odd thing is that if I run the command (either vacuumdb from
> the command line or vacuum verbose analyze from a psql session) as the
> 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).

Is the out-of-memory condition occurring on the server or client side?
Is there anything in the Postgres logs?

You might put a 'ulimit -a' command in your cron script to make sure
your memory limit settings are propagating correctly...

-Doug