Re: We need to log aborted autovacuums

> If you could gather more info on whether this logging catches the
> problem cases you're seeing, that would really be the right test for the
> patch's usefulness.  I'd give you solid 50/50 odds that you've correctly
> diagnosed the issue, and knowing for sure would make advocating for this
> logging a pretty easy sell to me at least.

Well, I already resolved the issue through polling pg_locks.  The issue
was IIT sessions which lasted up to an hour, which we fixed in the
application, so I don't have the test case available anymore.  I'd have
to generate a synthetic test case, and since I agree that a SQL-callable
diagnostic is superior to logging, I don't think we should pursue the
log levels further.

> Or should it perhaps be a per-table counter in pg_stat_user_tables,
> given your statement above?

Or even a timestamp: last_autovacuum_attempt, which would record the
last time autovacuum was tried.  If that's fairly recent and you have a
large number of dead rows, you know what kind of problem you have and
can turn on debug.

--                                  -- Josh Berkus                                    PostgreSQL Experts Inc.
                        http://www.pgexperts.com