Wiki / Configuration Parameters

Sets the maximum amount of memory used for temporary buffers within each database session. These are session-local buffers used only for access to temporary tables. If this value is specified without units, it is taken as blocks, that is BLCKSZ bytes, typically 8kB. The default is eight megabytes (8MB). (If BLCKSZ is not 8kB, the default value scales proportionally to it.) This setting can be changed within individual sessions, but only before the first use of temporary tables within the session; subsequent attempts to change the value will have no effect on that session. A session will allocate temporary buffers as needed up to the limit given by temp_buffers. The cost of setting a large value in sessions that do not actually need many temporary buffers is only a buffer descriptor, or about 64 bytes, per increment in temp_buffers. However if a buffer is actually used an additional 8192 bytes will be consumed for it (or in general, BLCKSZ bytes).

English manual coverage begins with PostgreSQL 7.4. Source history and runtime observations have their own recorded version boundaries.

boot val

1024

category

Resource Usage / Memory

context

user

documented

true

enumvals

Unknown

extra desc

Unknown

lang

en

max val

1073741823

metadata version

18

min val

100

name

temp_buffers

short desc

Sets the maximum number of temporary buffers used by each session.

source

pg-settings-source-snapshot

unit

8kB

vartype

integer