[postgis-users] Postgres Tuning - Actual Results

[Brian Hamlin]

I have a long, computationally intensive query I am running on Ubuntu 
Linux 64bit, 8G ram
PostgreSQL 9, PostGIS trunk. I have a question about memory usage and 
setttings..

postgresql.conf memory related settings:
                           work_mem = 512M
                    shared_buffers = 1024M
maintenance_work_mem = 24M

other settings at the default values

   So, on an 8G machine, after 12 hours of running
four processes on four cores.. I got the following stats

    VIRT    RES    SHR       MEM%
3206M  2228M  1011M   28%
3215M 2198M 1010M  27.7%
3301M 2400M 1013M  30.2%
4411M 3373M 1037M 42.5%

MEM => 6725M / 7938M
SWAP => 3685M

-----

   So, clearly it has gone well into SWAP, but maybe this isnt a bad 
thing.
I am guessing that work_mem is the wildcard that is causing the large 
allocations..
Comments / Suggestions on this ?

   thanks -Brian

==
Brian Hamlin
planetwork.net
OSGeo California Chapter
(415) 717-4462 cell