PostgreSQL arrives configured for use on a shared system, though many people want to run dedicated database systems. The PostgreSQL project wishes to ensure that PostgreSQL will play nicely with other server software, and will not assume that it has access to the full server resources. If you, as the system administrator, know that there is no other important server software running on the system, then you can crank the values up much higher.
Before we start, we need to know two sets of information:
- The size of the physical RAM that will be dedicated to PostgreSQL
- The types of applications for which we will use PostgreSQL
If your database is larger than 32 MB, then you'll probably benefit from increasing shared_buffers
. You can increase this to a much larger value, but remember that running out of memory induces many problems.
For instance, PostgreSQL is able to store information on disk when the available memory is too small...