Received: from magus.postgresql.org (magus.postgresql.org [87.238.57.229]) by mail.postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3DACB723ED9 for ; Sun, 20 Nov 2011 09:56:45 -0400 (AST) Received: from wizmail.org ([217.146.107.12]) by magus.postgresql.org with esmtp (Exim 4.72) (envelope-from ) id 1RS7sz-00009a-4w for pgsql-performance@postgresql.org; Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:56:45 +0000 Received: from trunk.jgh.adsl.wizards.co.uk ([217.146.123.57] helo=ebony.jgh.adsl.wizards.co.uk) from_AS 16353 by wizmail.org with esmtpsa (TLSv1:DHE-RSA-CAMELLIA256-SHA:256) (Exim 4.77) id 1RS7sl-0000Qk-NM (return-path ); Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:56:32 +0000 Message-ID: <4EC906FE.5040902@wizmail.org> Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 13:56:14 +0000 From: Jeremy Harris User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.21) Gecko/20090320 Fedora/2.0.0.21-1.fc9 Thunderbird/2.0.0.21 Mnenhy/0.7.5.0 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org Subject: Re: external sort performance References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archive-Number: 201111/248 X-Sequence-Number: 45759 On 2011-11-17 17:10, Jon Nelson wrote: > external sort ended, 7708696 disk blocks used: CPU 359.84s/57504.66u > sec elapsed 58966.76 sec > > Am I to understand that the CPU portion of the sorting only took 6 > minutes but the sort itself took almost 16.5 hours and used approx > 60GB of disk space? I realise you've had helpful answers by now, but.... that reads as 16 hours of cpu time to me; mostly user-mode but with 6 minute of system-mode. 98% cpu usage for the 16 hours elapsed. -- Jeremy