This has also happened to me.
I had another programmer write a query that was requesting a field from a
table but, forgot to include the name of the table in the query. It was a
3 table query and he accidentally included a fourth table field but didn't
add the table in the clause.
I was suprised to see postgres not error out. Instead it sucked all of the
CPU from the machine threw the pg_sort files all of the drive and
eventually filled up the drive.
Very strange. Perhaps the Postgres Team can take note and fix for future.
Another thing that I am seeing alot of is fields labeled as serial and
having duplicate oid's. It happens on 3 of my 4 machines on a monthly
basis. This really needs to be fixed because vacuum won't run without
the serial fields being unique.
All of the above running 6.5.3
Andy
On Sat, 18 Dec 1999, Robin's Postgres List Archive wrote:
>
> Hi Folks,
>
> When I write a query with a "WHERE" claused constrained by the "OR"
> operator, postgresql creates the enormous pg_sorttemp~ files in
> ~pgsql/data/base/dbName/ that basically eat up all remaining disk space in
> a matter of seconds. These files are 1.8GB+ by the time the partition is
> full.
>
> Obviously, I need to rewrite these queries or break them up into multiple
> queries. I was posting here to see if anyone with more experience might
> have a suggestion or comment on this - like a better way to write queries
> that otherwise would use "OR", or maybe a configuration or hack tip on how
> to prevent postgresql from running wild by building such huge sorttemp
> files.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Robin
>
>
> ************
>
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