"Marinos J. Yannikos" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Jeff Trout wrote: >> Remember that it is going to allocate 800MB per sort.
> I didn't know that it always allocates the full amount of memory > specificed in the configuration It doesn't ... but it could use *up to* that much before starting to spill to disk. If you are certain your sorts won't use that much, then you could set the limit lower, hm? Also keep in mind that sort_mem controls hash table size as well as sort size. The hashtable code is not nearly as accurate as the sort code about honoring the specified limit exactly. So you really oughta figure that you could need some multiple of sort_mem per active backend. regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 7: don't forget to increase your free space map settings