Our Linux is CentOS 4.3 (RedHat Enterprise clone) with ext3
partition. We have configured /tmp to be used for temp files and
this directory spans across entire disk space. We have about 90 GB
available for it to grow.. FB has `rwx' permissions there…

We have also tried to increase SortMemBlockSize and
SortMemUpperLimit with no success.

Any other suggestions?



--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Helen Borrie <helebor@...>
wrote:

>
> At 02:56 AM 23/04/2006, you wrote:
> >We have huge database ( 30 GB) that seems to be working ok on
> >Windows. We need to port this database to Linux. Transportable
> >backup file is about 20GB in size. Biggest table is about 185
> >millions of records.
> >
> >This backup file can be restored on the Windows server, but when

we

> >try to restore it on the Linux box FB gets deadlocked when it

needs

> >to activate indexes. We have managed to restore database without
> >index activation. Then we have activated indexes manually one by
> >one… all but the indexes on the biggest table. Any attempt to
> >activate or drop and restore indexes on the 185 Mln. records table
> >cause either deadlock , if run through the script, or when we run

it

> >interactively, then after a certain period of time we get an error
> >that FB cannot read from the temporary file in the temp directory…
> >sort operation failed..
>
> If you don't configure sort space explicitly in
> firebird.conf, the engine puts its sort files in
> /tmp. It's likely your /tmp directory is
> either on an ext2 partition or the partition
> itself is smaller than the size you need for sorts on this large

table.

>
> Try configuring your temp sort space explicitly
> in a non-ext2 partition that's physically large
> enough to accommodate the largest table +
> more. The configuration parameter you want is
> TempDirectories. You can configure more than one
> location but a sort file has to be able to
> accommodate at least all of that table in one temp space.
>
> The default is
> # TempDirectories =
> which tells the engine to use /temp
>
> An example configuration would be (removing the # comment marker)
> TempDirectories = /home/firebird
> This will use /home/firebird until the entire partition is

exhausted.

>
> If you want to limit the amount of sort space,
> add an argument in bytes. For example, the
> following will use up to ~ 5 Gb before blowing:
> TempDirectories = /home/firebird 5450000000
>
> Suppose you have your /var directory on its own
> partition and you want the engine to put sort
> files there by default but keep a suitably sized
> space available for huge sorts when needed. You could configure

it like this:

> TempDirectories = /var;/home/firebird 5450000000
>
> Ensure that, wherever you consign the sort files,
> the user the user:group firebird:firebird has rwx permissions.
>
> >We have checked , and we have enough disk space on the Linux box.
>
> Also check the partitioning of the disk.
>
> btw, Firebird 1.5 will use RAM for sorts if
> there's enough available. You can configure this space as well.
>
> # ----------------------------
> # In-memory sorting module
> #
> # The amount of memory allocated for each sort block.
> #
> # Type: integer
> #
> #SortMemBlockSize = 1048576
>
> #
> # The maximum amount of memory to be allocated by the in-memory
> # sorting module.
> #
> # For Classic servers, this setting is defaulted to 8 MB.
> # Although it can be increased, the value applies to each client
> # connection/server instance and thus consumes a lot of memory.
> #
> # Type: integer
> #
> #SortMemUpperLimit = 67108864
>
> ./heLen
>