Wiki / Configuration Parameters

Specifies the maximum amount of disk space that a process can use for temporary files, such as sort and hash temporary files, or the storage file for a held cursor. A transaction attempting to exceed this limit will be canceled. If this value is specified without units, it is taken as kilobytes. -1 (the default) means no limit. Only superusers and users with the appropriate SET privilege can change this setting. This setting constrains the total space used at any instant by all temporary files used by a given PostgreSQL process. It should be noted that disk space used for explicit temporary tables, as opposed to temporary files used behind-the-scenes in query execution, does not count against this limit.

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

boot val

-1

category

Resource Usage / Disk

context

superuser

documented

true

enumvals

Unknown

extra desc

-1 means no limit.

lang

en

max val

2147483647

metadata version

18

min val

-1

name

temp_file_limit

short desc

Limits the total size of all temporary files used by each process.

source

pg-settings-source-snapshot

unit

kB

vartype

integer