>Is there some reason you can't add more swap space?
>
>
Yes, disk space. I have about 2 GB of swap space enabled.
>How do you know it is Postgres that is using lots of memory? The OOM killer
>doesn't just kill of memory hogs, so you can't just assume the processes
>being killed tells you which processes were using lots of memory.
>
>
>
I keep 'top' running while I launch the query. One single postmaster
climbs to the top, claiming 98% MEM and about 8% CPU.
>The memory that Postgres uses is controlled in postgresql.conf. One particular
>gotcha is that sortmem is per sort, so if you have a number of concurrent
>sorts you might be using more memory than you expected.
>
>
I am very sure there are no other queries running at the same time. This
is a development machine of which I have full control.