[OSM-dev] Osm2pgsql failure with low-end server

[Frederik Ramm]

Hi,

On 12/08/2011 09:54 AM, Jukka Rahkonen wrote:
>>> processing way (68k) at 0.46k/sWARNING:  terminating connection because
>>> of
>>> crash of another server process
>>> DETAIL:  The postmaster has commanded this server process to roll back
>>> the
>>> current transaction and exit, because another server process exited
>>> abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory.
>>
>> Does this correspond to some kind of "OOM killer" message in your dmesg?
>
> Sorry, I am just a poor end user and total beginner with Linux. But
> command dmesg does really show on the last line of listing:
> Out of memory: kill process 26675 (postgres) score 16795 or a child.

OK, so the kernel has killed the postgres process due to a memory 
problem. You can alleviate that by adding a little swap space to your 
system (which I guess you might not have, or have too little of). That 
means, in poor end user terms, that instead of killing a process, your 
system will just become slower when it reaches the memory limit.

It might also be possible to trim the postgres config to use less 
memory, and/or make sure that you don't have unnecessary, 
memory-consuming programs running. Maybe you can stop some things for 
the duration of the import.

The command

ps auxw --sort vsz

should list currently running processes, those with the largest memory 
consumption last.

700 MB is a tiny machine, but then the Finland data set isn't that large 
either... it must be possible somehow ;)

Bye
Frederik