Received: from localhost (maia-3.hub.org [200.46.204.184]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E44E29FB6FE for ; Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:29:34 -0300 (ADT) Received: from postgresql.org ([200.46.204.71]) by localhost (mx1.hub.org [200.46.204.184]) (amavisd-maia, port 10024) with ESMTP id 75278-03 for ; Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:29:24 -0300 (ADT) X-Greylist: from auto-whitelisted by SQLgrey-1.7.5 Received: from floppy.pyrenet.fr (news.pyrenet.fr [194.116.145.2]) by postgresql.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 34BE89FB6F3 for ; Tue, 17 Jul 2007 19:29:30 -0300 (ADT) Received: by floppy.pyrenet.fr (Postfix, from userid 106) id 8132731435; Wed, 18 Jul 2007 00:29:27 +0200 (MET DST) From: Ron Mayer X-Newsgroups: pgsql.performance Subject: ionice to make vacuum friendier? Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2007 15:29:32 -0700 Organization: Hub.Org Networking Services Lines: 20 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: Icedove 1.5.0.10 (X11/20070329) To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org X-Virus-Scanned: Maia Mailguard 1.0.1 X-Spam-Status: No, hits=0.032 tagged_above=0 required=5 tests=AWL=0.031, BAYES_50=0.001 X-Spam-Level: X-Archive-Number: 200707/205 X-Sequence-Number: 25889 Seems Linux has IO scheduling through a program called ionice. Has anyone here experimented with using it rather than vacuum sleep settings? http://linux.die.net/man/1/ionice This program sets the io scheduling class and priority for a program. As of this writing, Linux supports 3 scheduling classes: Idle. A program running with idle io priority will only get disk time when no other program has asked for disk io for a defined grace period. The impact of idle io processes on normal system activity should be zero.[...] Best effort. This is the default scheduling class for any process that hasn't asked for a specific io priority. Programs inherit the CPU nice setting for io priorities. [...] http://friedcpu.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/why-arent-you-using-ionice-yet/