Date: Thu, 16 Aug 2007 09:28:15 -0400
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@commandprompt.com>
To: Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8@verizon.net>
Cc: pgsql-sql@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Starting autovacuum in postgresql-8.1.9
Message-ID: <20070816132815.GF21236@alvh.no-ip.org>
References: <46C44F03.4070606@verizon.net>
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Jean-David Beyer wrote:

> I am running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and postgresql-8.1.9-1.el5 (&c.).
> 
> It seems autovacuum would be a good idea, but I cannot see how to start it,
> mainly because I cannot find it. There are autovacuum settings in
> postgresql.conf, but they are all commented out.
> 
> Does it suffice to turn them on and restart the postmaster? Or are they off
> because autovacuum is not supported? I have looked around in the PostgreSQL
> book by Douglas & Douglas and they say it is in a contrib directory, but the
> one that makes sense does not seem to contain it. Is it built into the
> server now, or is it to be found somewhere else? In particular, pgavd does
> not exist anywhere on my system.

Contrib existed up to 8.0.  Autovacuum was integrated into the server in 8.1.
It seems Douglas' book covers only 8.0.

You can simply uncomment and turn it on.  Note that you will need to
enable stats_row_level too.

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support