Hi, we work with PostgreSQL 7.0.3 and FreeBSD (4.2 / 4.3). the database is in production state, and daily heavy loaded. i think our problems are similar to problems described in : http://fts.postgresql.org/db/mw/msg.html?mid=28871 recently, we have updated our kernel, according to this doc : http://www.postgresql.org/idocs/index.php?kernel-resources.html here the options we have tuned: options SHMALL=32768 options SHMMAX=(SHMALL*PAGE_SIZE) options SEMUME=40 options SHMMAXPGS=32768 options SHMSEG=256 options SEMMNI=256 options SEMMNS=512 options SEMMNU=256 options SEMMAP=256 everything looks working fine, but after 9 or 10 days in production, some problems appeared : sometimes each postmaster child stay in a strange state, according to top, 'semwait' state. running ipcclean clean all those children ! sometimes, when the number of postmaster raise up to the limit, we can't connect to the backend, we've got the message : "psql: The Data Base System is in recovery mode" after a pg_ctl stop, the message changes into : "psql: The Data Base System is shutting down" but the database never shutdown ( or are we too impatient ?). it appeared that the inactive memory raise, until we'v got 10 megs of free memory, as described by Alfred Perlstein. after a reboot, everything looks fine but after 10 days of uptime, the problem is the same. we have just updated our FreeBSD kernel to 4.3. is this update pertinent ? are the selected values for the kernel options speed up a memory leak problem ? (the problems appeared faster since our kernel optimisation) can an update of postgresql from 7.0.3 to 7.1.2 solve this problem ? the REAME.v7.1 talk about bug fixes on memory leak problem. any experience, and/or advisory will be appreciated. -- Matthieu Clavier [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl