Tino Schwarze <postgresql@tisc.de> writes:
> So I'd like to watch for transactions waiting for the lock in step 3 - I
> do not care for the time it took to perform the work.
Dunno if this is of any use to you, but there is a "log_lock_waits"
feature in CVS HEAD that seems to be exactly what you want. I couldn't
recommend running 8.3 in production yet, but it wouldn't be out of the
realm of reason to back-port the patch for that.
regards, tom lane