shared_buffers
(integer
)
Sets the amount of memory the database server uses for shared
memory buffers. The default is typically 128 megabytes
(128MB
), but might be less if your kernel settings will
not support it (as determined during initdb).
This setting must be at least 128 kilobytes. (Non-default
values of BLCKSZ
change the minimum.) However,
settings significantly higher than the minimum are usually needed
for good performance. This parameter can only be set at server start.
If you have a dedicated database server with 1GB or more of RAM, a
reasonable starting value for shared_buffers
is 25%
of the memory in your system. There are some workloads where even
larger settings for shared_buffers
are effective, but
because PostgreSQL also relies on the
operating system cache, it is unlikely that an allocation of more than
40% of RAM to shared_buffers
will work better than a
smaller amount. Larger settings for shared_buffers
usually require a corresponding increase in
max_wal_size
, in order to spread out the
process of writing large quantities of new or changed data over a
longer period of time.
On systems with less than 1GB of RAM, a smaller percentage of RAM is appropriate, so as to leave adequate space for the operating system.
huge_pages
(enum
)
Enables/disables the use of huge memory pages. Valid values are
try
(the default), on
,
and off
.
At present, this feature is supported only on Linux. The setting is
ignored on other systems when set to try
.
The use of huge pages results in smaller page tables and less CPU time spent on memory management, increasing performance. For more details, see Section 18.4.5.
With huge_pages
set to try
,
the server will try to use huge pages, but fall back to using
normal allocation if that fails. With on
, failure
to use huge pages will prevent the server from starting up. With
off
, huge pages will not be used.
temp_buffers
(integer
)
Sets the maximum number of temporary buffers used by each database
session. These are session-local buffers used only for access to
temporary tables. The default is eight megabytes
(8MB
). The setting can be changed within individual
sessions, but only before the first use of temporary tables
within the session; subsequent attempts to change the value will
have no effect on that session.
A session will allocate temporary buffers as needed up to the limit
given by temp_buffers
. The cost of setting a large
value in sessions that do not actually need many temporary
buffers is only a buffer descriptor, or about 64 bytes, per
increment in temp_buffers
. However if a buffer is
actually used an additional 8192 bytes will be consumed for it
(or in general, BLCKSZ
bytes).
max_prepared_transactions
(integer
)
Sets the maximum number of transactions that can be in the “prepared” state simultaneously (see PREPARE TRANSACTION). Setting this parameter to zero (which is the default) disables the prepared-transaction feature. This parameter can only be set at server start.
If you are not planning to use prepared transactions, this parameter
should be set to zero to prevent accidental creation of prepared
transactions. If you are using prepared transactions, you will
probably want max_prepared_transactions
to be at
least as large as max_connections, so that every
session can have a prepared transaction pending.
When running a standby server, you must set this parameter to the same or higher value than on the master server. Otherwise, queries will not be allowed in the standby server.
work_mem
(integer
)
Specifies the amount of memory to be used by internal sort operations
and hash tables before writing to temporary disk files. The value
defaults to four megabytes (4MB
).
Note that for a complex query, several sort or hash operations might be
running in parallel; each operation will be allowed to use as much memory
as this value specifies before it starts to write data into temporary
files. Also, several running sessions could be doing such operations
concurrently. Therefore, the total memory used could be many
times the value of work_mem
; it is necessary to
keep this fact in mind when choosing the value. Sort operations are
used for ORDER BY
, DISTINCT
, and
merge joins.
Hash tables are used in hash joins, hash-based aggregation, and
hash-based processing of IN
subqueries.
maintenance_work_mem
(integer
)
Specifies the maximum amount of memory to be used by maintenance
operations, such as VACUUM
, CREATE
INDEX
, and ALTER TABLE ADD FOREIGN KEY
. It defaults
to 64 megabytes (64MB
). Since only one of these
operations can be executed at a time by a database session, and
an installation normally doesn't have many of them running
concurrently, it's safe to set this value significantly larger
than work_mem
. Larger settings might improve
performance for vacuuming and for restoring database dumps.
Note that when autovacuum runs, up to autovacuum_max_workers times this memory may be allocated, so be careful not to set the default value too high. It may be useful to control for this by separately setting autovacuum_work_mem.
replacement_sort_tuples
(integer
)
When the number of tuples to be sorted is smaller than this number, a sort will produce its first output run using replacement selection rather than quicksort. This may be useful in memory-constrained environments where tuples that are input into larger sort operations have a strong physical-to-logical correlation. Note that this does not include input tuples with an inverse correlation. It is possible for the replacement selection algorithm to generate one long run that requires no merging, where use of the default strategy would result in many runs that must be merged to produce a final sorted output. This may allow sort operations to complete sooner.
The default is 150,000 tuples. Note that higher values are typically not much more effective, and may be counter-productive, since the priority queue is sensitive to the size of available CPU cache, whereas the default strategy sorts runs using a cache oblivious algorithm. This property allows the default sort strategy to automatically and transparently make effective use of available CPU cache.
Setting maintenance_work_mem
to its default
value usually prevents utility command external sorts (e.g.,
sorts used by CREATE INDEX
to build B-Tree
indexes) from ever using replacement selection sort, unless the
input tuples are quite wide.
autovacuum_work_mem
(integer
)
Specifies the maximum amount of memory to be used by each
autovacuum worker process. It defaults to -1, indicating that
the value of maintenance_work_mem should
be used instead. The setting has no effect on the behavior of
VACUUM
when run in other contexts.
max_stack_depth
(integer
)
Specifies the maximum safe depth of the server's execution stack.
The ideal setting for this parameter is the actual stack size limit
enforced by the kernel (as set by ulimit -s
or local
equivalent), less a safety margin of a megabyte or so. The safety
margin is needed because the stack depth is not checked in every
routine in the server, but only in key potentially-recursive routines
such as expression evaluation. The default setting is two
megabytes (2MB
), which is conservatively small and
unlikely to risk crashes. However, it might be too small to allow
execution of complex functions. Only superusers can change this
setting.
Setting max_stack_depth
higher than
the actual kernel limit will mean that a runaway recursive function
can crash an individual backend process. On platforms where
PostgreSQL can determine the kernel limit,
the server will not allow this variable to be set to an unsafe
value. However, not all platforms provide the information,
so caution is recommended in selecting a value.
dynamic_shared_memory_type
(enum
)
Specifies the dynamic shared memory implementation that the server
should use. Possible values are posix
(for POSIX shared
memory allocated using shm_open
), sysv
(for System V shared memory allocated via shmget
),
windows
(for Windows shared memory), mmap
(to simulate shared memory using memory-mapped files stored in the
data directory), and none
(to disable this feature).
Not all values are supported on all platforms; the first supported
option is the default for that platform. The use of the
mmap
option, which is not the default on any platform,
is generally discouraged because the operating system may write
modified pages back to disk repeatedly, increasing system I/O load;
however, it may be useful for debugging, when the
pg_dynshmem
directory is stored on a RAM disk, or when
other shared memory facilities are not available.
temp_file_limit
(integer
)
Specifies the maximum amount of disk space that a process can use
for temporary files, such as sort and hash temporary files, or the
storage file for a held cursor. A transaction attempting to exceed
this limit will be canceled.
The value is specified in kilobytes, and -1
(the
default) means no limit.
Only superusers can change this setting.
This setting constrains the total space used at any instant by all temporary files used by a given PostgreSQL process. It should be noted that disk space used for explicit temporary tables, as opposed to temporary files used behind-the-scenes in query execution, does not count against this limit.
max_files_per_process
(integer
)
Sets the maximum number of simultaneously open files allowed to each server subprocess. The default is one thousand files. If the kernel is enforcing a safe per-process limit, you don't need to worry about this setting. But on some platforms (notably, most BSD systems), the kernel will allow individual processes to open many more files than the system can actually support if many processes all try to open that many files. If you find yourself seeing “Too many open files” failures, try reducing this setting. This parameter can only be set at server start.
During the execution of VACUUM
and ANALYZE
commands, the system maintains an
internal counter that keeps track of the estimated cost of the
various I/O operations that are performed. When the accumulated
cost reaches a limit (specified by
vacuum_cost_limit
), the process performing
the operation will sleep for a short period of time, as specified by
vacuum_cost_delay
. Then it will reset the
counter and continue execution.
The intent of this feature is to allow administrators to reduce
the I/O impact of these commands on concurrent database
activity. There are many situations where it is not
important that maintenance commands like
VACUUM
and ANALYZE
finish
quickly; however, it is usually very important that these
commands do not significantly interfere with the ability of the
system to perform other database operations. Cost-based vacuum
delay provides a way for administrators to achieve this.
This feature is disabled by default for manually issued
VACUUM
commands. To enable it, set the
vacuum_cost_delay
variable to a nonzero
value.
vacuum_cost_delay
(integer
)
The length of time, in milliseconds, that the process will sleep
when the cost limit has been exceeded.
The default value is zero, which disables the cost-based vacuum
delay feature. Positive values enable cost-based vacuuming.
Note that on many systems, the effective resolution
of sleep delays is 10 milliseconds; setting
vacuum_cost_delay
to a value that is
not a multiple of 10 might have the same results as setting it
to the next higher multiple of 10.
When using cost-based vacuuming, appropriate values for
vacuum_cost_delay
are usually quite small, perhaps
10 or 20 milliseconds. Adjusting vacuum's resource consumption
is best done by changing the other vacuum cost parameters.
vacuum_cost_page_hit
(integer
)
The estimated cost for vacuuming a buffer found in the shared buffer cache. It represents the cost to lock the buffer pool, lookup the shared hash table and scan the content of the page. The default value is one.
vacuum_cost_page_miss
(integer
)
The estimated cost for vacuuming a buffer that has to be read from disk. This represents the effort to lock the buffer pool, lookup the shared hash table, read the desired block in from the disk and scan its content. The default value is 10.
vacuum_cost_page_dirty
(integer
)
The estimated cost charged when vacuum modifies a block that was previously clean. It represents the extra I/O required to flush the dirty block out to disk again. The default value is 20.
vacuum_cost_limit
(integer
)
The accumulated cost that will cause the vacuuming process to sleep. The default value is 200.
There are certain operations that hold critical locks and should
therefore complete as quickly as possible. Cost-based vacuum
delays do not occur during such operations. Therefore it is
possible that the cost accumulates far higher than the specified
limit. To avoid uselessly long delays in such cases, the actual
delay is calculated as vacuum_cost_delay
*
accumulated_balance
/
vacuum_cost_limit
with a maximum of
vacuum_cost_delay
* 4.
There is a separate server process called the background writer, whose function is to issue writes of “dirty” (new or modified) shared buffers. It writes shared buffers so server processes handling user queries seldom or never need to wait for a write to occur. However, the background writer does cause a net overall increase in I/O load, because while a repeatedly-dirtied page might otherwise be written only once per checkpoint interval, the background writer might write it several times as it is dirtied in the same interval. The parameters discussed in this subsection can be used to tune the behavior for local needs.
bgwriter_delay
(integer
)
Specifies the delay between activity rounds for the
background writer. In each round the writer issues writes
for some number of dirty buffers (controllable by the
following parameters). It then sleeps for bgwriter_delay
milliseconds, and repeats. When there are no dirty buffers in the
buffer pool, though, it goes into a longer sleep regardless of
bgwriter_delay
. The default value is 200
milliseconds (200ms
). Note that on many systems, the
effective resolution of sleep delays is 10 milliseconds; setting
bgwriter_delay
to a value that is not a multiple of 10
might have the same results as setting it to the next higher multiple
of 10. This parameter can only be set in the
postgresql.conf
file or on the server command line.
bgwriter_lru_maxpages
(integer
)
In each round, no more than this many buffers will be written
by the background writer. Setting this to zero disables
background writing. (Note that checkpoints, which are managed by
a separate, dedicated auxiliary process, are unaffected.)
The default value is 100 buffers.
This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf
file or on the server command line.
bgwriter_lru_multiplier
(floating point
)
The number of dirty buffers written in each round is based on the
number of new buffers that have been needed by server processes
during recent rounds. The average recent need is multiplied by
bgwriter_lru_multiplier
to arrive at an estimate of the
number of buffers that will be needed during the next round. Dirty
buffers are written until there are that many clean, reusable buffers
available. (However, no more than bgwriter_lru_maxpages
buffers will be written per round.)
Thus, a setting of 1.0 represents a “just in time” policy
of writing exactly the number of buffers predicted to be needed.
Larger values provide some cushion against spikes in demand,
while smaller values intentionally leave writes to be done by
server processes.
The default is 2.0.
This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf
file or on the server command line.
bgwriter_flush_after
(integer
)
Whenever more than bgwriter_flush_after
bytes have
been written by the background writer, attempt to force the OS to issue these
writes to the underlying storage. Doing so will limit the amount of
dirty data in the kernel's page cache, reducing the likelihood of
stalls when an fsync
is issued at the end of a checkpoint, or when
the OS writes data back in larger batches in the background. Often
that will result in greatly reduced transaction latency, but there
also are some cases, especially with workloads that are bigger than
shared_buffers, but smaller than the OS's page
cache, where performance might degrade. This setting may have no
effect on some platforms. The valid range is between
0
, which disables forced writeback, and
2MB
. The default is 512kB
on Linux,
0
elsewhere. (If BLCKSZ
is not 8kB,
the default and maximum values scale proportionally to it.)
This parameter can only be set in the postgresql.conf
file or on the server command line.
Smaller values of bgwriter_lru_maxpages
and
bgwriter_lru_multiplier
reduce the extra I/O load
caused by the background writer, but make it more likely that server
processes will have to issue writes for themselves, delaying interactive
queries.
effective_io_concurrency
(integer
)
Sets the number of concurrent disk I/O operations that PostgreSQL expects can be executed simultaneously. Raising this value will increase the number of I/O operations that any individual PostgreSQL session attempts to initiate in parallel. The allowed range is 1 to 1000, or zero to disable issuance of asynchronous I/O requests. Currently, this setting only affects bitmap heap scans.
For magnetic drives, a good starting point for this setting is the number of separate drives comprising a RAID 0 stripe or RAID 1 mirror being used for the database. (For RAID 5 the parity drive should not be counted.) However, if the database is often busy with multiple queries issued in concurrent sessions, lower values may be sufficient to keep the disk array busy. A value higher than needed to keep the disks busy will only result in extra CPU overhead. SSDs and other memory-based storage can often process many concurrent requests, so the best value might be in the hundreds.
Asynchronous I/O depends on an effective posix_fadvise
function, which some operating systems lack. If the function is not
present then setting this parameter to anything but zero will result
in an error. On some operating systems (e.g., Solaris), the function
is present but does not actually do anything.
The default is 1 on supported systems, otherwise 0. This value can be overridden for tables in a particular tablespace by setting the tablespace parameter of the same name (see ALTER TABLESPACE).
max_worker_processes
(integer
)
Sets the maximum number of background processes that the system can support. This parameter can only be set at server start. The default is 8.
When running a standby server, you must set this parameter to the same or higher value than on the master server. Otherwise, queries will not be allowed in the standby server.
When changing this value, consider also adjusting max_parallel_workers and max_parallel_workers_per_gather.
max_parallel_workers_per_gather
(integer
)
Sets the maximum number of workers that can be started by a single
Gather
or Gather Merge
node.
Parallel workers are taken from the pool of processes established by
max_worker_processes, limited by
max_parallel_workers. Note that the requested
number of workers may not actually be available at run time. If this
occurs, the plan will run with fewer workers than expected, which may
be inefficient. The default value is 2. Setting this value to 0
disables parallel query execution.
Note that parallel queries may consume very substantially more
resources than non-parallel queries, because each worker process is
a completely separate process which has roughly the same impact on the
system as an additional user session. This should be taken into
account when choosing a value for this setting, as well as when
configuring other settings that control resource utilization, such
as work_mem. Resource limits such as
work_mem
are applied individually to each worker,
which means the total utilization may be much higher across all
processes than it would normally be for any single process.
For example, a parallel query using 4 workers may use up to 5 times
as much CPU time, memory, I/O bandwidth, and so forth as a query which
uses no workers at all.
For more information on parallel query, see Chapter 15.
max_parallel_workers
(integer
)
Sets the maximum number of workers that the system can support for parallel queries. The default value is 8. When increasing or decreasing this value, consider also adjusting max_parallel_workers_per_gather. Also, note that a setting for this value which is higher than max_worker_processes will have no effect, since parallel workers are taken from the pool of worker processes established by that setting.
backend_flush_after
(integer
)
Whenever more than backend_flush_after
bytes have
been written by a single backend, attempt to force the OS to issue
these writes to the underlying storage. Doing so will limit the
amount of dirty data in the kernel's page cache, reducing the
likelihood of stalls when an fsync
is issued at the end of a
checkpoint, or when the OS writes data back in larger batches in the
background. Often that will result in greatly reduced transaction
latency, but there also are some cases, especially with workloads
that are bigger than shared_buffers, but smaller
than the OS's page cache, where performance might degrade. This
setting may have no effect on some platforms. The valid range is
between 0
, which disables forced writeback,
and 2MB
. The default is 0
, i.e., no
forced writeback. (If BLCKSZ
is not 8kB,
the maximum value scales proportionally to it.)
old_snapshot_threshold
(integer
)
Sets the minimum time that a snapshot can be used without risk of a
snapshot too old
error occurring when using the snapshot.
This parameter can only be set at server start.
Beyond the threshold, old data may be vacuumed away. This can help prevent bloat in the face of snapshots which remain in use for a long time. To prevent incorrect results due to cleanup of data which would otherwise be visible to the snapshot, an error is generated when the snapshot is older than this threshold and the snapshot is used to read a page which has been modified since the snapshot was built.
A value of -1
disables this feature, and is the default.
Useful values for production work probably range from a small number
of hours to a few days. The setting will be coerced to a granularity
of minutes, and small numbers (such as 0
or
1min
) are only allowed because they may sometimes be
useful for testing. While a setting as high as 60d
is
allowed, please note that in many workloads extreme bloat or
transaction ID wraparound may occur in much shorter time frames.
When this feature is enabled, freed space at the end of a relation
cannot be released to the operating system, since that could remove
information needed to detect the snapshot too old
condition. All space allocated to a relation remains associated with
that relation for reuse only within that relation unless explicitly
freed (for example, with VACUUM FULL
).
This setting does not attempt to guarantee that an error will be
generated under any particular circumstances. In fact, if the
correct results can be generated from (for example) a cursor which
has materialized a result set, no error will be generated even if the
underlying rows in the referenced table have been vacuumed away.
Some tables cannot safely be vacuumed early, and so will not be
affected by this setting, such as system catalogs. For such tables
this setting will neither reduce bloat nor create a possibility
of a snapshot too old
error on scanning.