----- Original Message -----
From: "Joop" <jvdwege@xs4all.nl> To: "Dave Neary" <dneary@redhat.com> Cc: "users" <users@ovirt.org> Sent: Friday, September 21, 2012 9:57:02 AM Subject: Re: [Users] Installation problem
Dave Neary wrote:
It turns out, in /var/log/messages, that I have these error messages:
Sep 21 14:00:59 clare pg_ctl[5298]: FATAL: could not create shared memory segment: Invalid argument Sep 21 14:00:59 clare pg_ctl[5298]: DETAIL: Failed system call was shmget(key=5432001, size=36519936, 03600). Sep 21 14:00:59 clare pg_ctl[5298]: HINT: This error usually means that PostgreSQL's request for a shared memory segment exceeded your kernel's SHMMAX parameter. You can either reduce the request size or reconfigure the kernel with larger SHMMAX. To reduce the request size (currently 36519936 bytes), reduce PostgreSQL's shared memory usage, perhaps by reducing shared_buffers or max_connections. Sep 21 14:00:59 clare pg_ctl[5298]: If the request size is already small, it's possible that it is less than your kernel's SHMMIN parameter, in which case raising the request size or reconfiguring SHMMIN is called for. Sep 21 14:00:59 clare pg_ctl[5298]: The PostgreSQL documentation contains more information about shared memory configuration. Sep 21 14:01:03 clare pg_ctl[5298]: pg_ctl: could not start server Sep 21 14:01:03 clare pg_ctl[5298]: Examine the log output. Sep 21 14:01:03 clare systemd[1]: postgresql.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1 Sep 21 14:01:03 clare systemd[1]: Unit postgresql.service entered failed state.
I increased the kernel's SHMMAX, and engine-cleanup worked correctly.
Has anyone else experienced this issue?
Yes, not related to oVirt but on a database server also running Postgres. It seems that either the package maintainer is very conservative or postgres itself is. Standard on the Debian 6 server was also very low shmmax. What is the OS you run ovirt-engine on?
I'm going to take a stab and guess Fedora. This came up for an unrelated reason in #fedora-devel the other day, because Fedora (and I suspect Debian as well) has a policy of sticking as close to upstream as possible it uses the shmmax of the upstream kernel - which is as you note quite low. In RHEL and other EL6 derivatives this value is modified and set much higher. Steve