Troubleshoot Tiger Cloud

Cannot create another database

ERROR:  tsdb_admin: database <DB_NAME> is not an allowed database name
HINT:  Contact your administrator to configure the "tsdb_admin.allowed_databases"

Each Tiger Cloud service hosts a single PostgreSQL instance called tsdb. You see this error when you try to create an additional database in a service. If you need another database, create a new service.

User permissions do not allow chunks to be converted to columnstore or rowstore

ERROR:  must be owner of hypertable "HYPERTABLE_NAME"

You might get this error if you attempt to compress a chunk into the columnstore, or decompress it back into rowstore with a non-privileged user account. To compress or decompress a chunk, your user account must have permissions that allow it to perform CREATE INDEX on the chunk. You can check the permissions of the current user with this command at the psql command prompt:

\dn+ <USERNAME>

To resolve this problem, grant your user account the appropriate privileges with this command:

GRANT PRIVILEGES
    ON TABLE <TABLE_NAME>
    TO <ROLE_TYPE>;

For more information about the GRANT command, see the PostgreSQL documentation.

Background jobs failing with “out of shared memory”

You might see this error when running compression, continuous aggregate refresh, or other background jobs that touch many chunks:

FATAL:  out of shared memory
HINT:  You might need to increase max_locks_per_transaction.

Despite the wording, this error is not caused by insufficient RAM. It means the PostgreSQL lock table is full. TimescaleDB acquires a lock on every chunk involved in a query or background job. When a hypertable has many chunks, these locks can exceed the default max_locks_per_transaction limit (usually 64).

Diagnose the issue

1. Check the current setting:

   SELECT name, setting
   FROM pg_settings
   WHERE name = 'max_locks_per_transaction';

2. Count chunks per hypertable:

   SELECT hypertable_name, num_chunks
   FROM timescaledb_information.hypertables
   ORDER BY num_chunks DESC;

Calculate the right value

For most workloads, use this formula:

max_locks_per_transaction = (2 × max_chunks_in_any_hypertable) / max_connections

The factor of 2 accounts for index locks. Round up and add headroom for future growth, because changing this parameter requires a database restart.

Apply the fix

Tips

Tiger Cloud: Adjust max_locks_per_transaction from Tiger Console under Database configuration → Advanced parameters. Search for the parameter, edit the value, and click Apply changes and restart. See Advanced parameters for details.

Self-hosted: Set max_locks_per_transaction in the postgresql.conf configuration file, then restart PostgreSQL.

For more information, see Transaction lock settings and the PostgreSQL lock management documentation.