In response to Tom Wilcox <hungrytom@googlemail.com>:
<snip>
> Also, can anyone give me any pointers for configuring postgres to use
> ALL 96GB of RAM in my new machine? I would like to know it was using
> everything available.. especially when it is possible to load an entire
> 30m row table into memory! I am currently using the default
> configuration from standard installation.
>
> Any help/suggestions are very much appreciated.
There is a LOT of information missing from this email, such as PG
version and the OS it's running on.
As a starter, though, the default config is not appropriate for most
workloads, and is certainly not optimal for a machine with 96G of RAM.
Start out by following any of the dozens of PG tuning howtos to get
your basic memory setting set up. For example:
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Tuning_Your_PostgreSQL_Server
--
Bill Moran
http://www.potentialtech.com
http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/