Received: from localhost (maia-5.hub.org [200.46.204.182]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BEF2A9FBD82 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 2007 14:37:45 -0400 (AST) Received: from postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.182]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 57105-02 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 2007 14:37:41 -0400 (AST) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.4 Received: from floppy.pyrenet.fr (news.pyrenet.fr [194.116.145.2]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 6A7629FBD78 for ; Wed, 21 Feb 2007 14:37:42 -0400 (AST) Received: by floppy.pyrenet.fr (Postfix, from userid 106) id 9684E308F7; Wed, 21 Feb 2007 19:37:41 +0100 (MET) From: Mark Stosberg X-Newsgroups: pgsql.performance Subject: Auto-Vacuum in 8.1 was ineffective for me. 8.2 may work better? Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:37:10 -0500 Organization: Hub.Org Networking Services Lines: 24 Message-ID: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@news.hub.org User-Agent: Thunderbird 1.5.0.8 (X11/20061109) To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.199 tagged_above=0 required=5 tests=AWL, BAYES_50 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 200702/215 X-Sequence-Number: 23269 When I upgraded a busy database system to PostgreSQL 8.1, I was excited about AutoVacuum, and promptly enabled it, and turned off the daily vacuum process. ( I set the following, as well as the option to enable auto vacuuming stats_start_collector = true stats_row_level = true ) I could see in the logs that related activity was happening, but within a few days, the performance became horrible, and enabling the regular vacuum fixed it. Eventually autovacuum was completely disabled. What could have happened? Is 8.2 more likely to "just work" in the regard? Is the the table-specific tuning that I would have needed to do? I realize getting autovacuuming to work could be one way to exclude the large table I wrote about in a recent post. Mark