freebsd stable - Jun 2005 - PostgreSQL's vacuumdb fails to allocate memory for non-root users

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).

Thanks,

Sven

Sven Willenberger <sven@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

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.