Re: autovacuum causing numerous regression-test failures

Tom Lane wrote:
> > So we turn autovacuum off for regression test instance.
>
> Not a solution for "make installcheck",

Well, for "make installcheck" we don't have any control over whether 
autovacuum has been turned on or off manually anyway.  If you are 
concerned about build farm reliability, the build farm scripts can 
surely be made to initialize or start the instance in a particular way.

Another option might be to turn off stats_row_level on the fly.

> > Or we put manual exceptions for the affected tables into
> > pg_autovacuum.
>
> New feature?  Or does that capability exist already?

I haven't ever used the pg_autovacuum table but the documentation 
certainly makes one believe that this is possible.

> > I opine that when a database is to be dropped, the connections
> > should be cut.
>
> Sure, but that's another thing that we're not going to start
> designing and implementing four weeks after feature freeze.

Right.

> clear that that is not the case, and I don't think it makes any sense
> from a project-management standpoint to try to flush the problems out
> at this time in the release cycle.  We have more than enough problems
> to fix for 8.2 already.  Let's try to do this early in the 8.3 cycle
> instead.

Let's just consider some of the options a bit more closely, and if they 
don't work, we'll revert it.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/