Re: Postgresqlism & Vacuum?

On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Andrew Snow wrote:

>
> On Fri, 14 Apr 2000, Thomas wrote:
>
> > For large 24x7 installations, it's impossible to vacuum nightly because when
> > postgresql is vacuuming the table is locked up, to the end-user the database
> > has already hung.
>
> That's right. I complained about this in a discussion with a Postgresql
> developer, who assured me they were working towards a fix.  I really don't
> care whether the vacuuming is fixed so that it does not lock the table
> completely, or that vacuuming becomes say, a once-a-month or less frequent
> operation. For some reason everyone who is used to working with PostgreSQL
> accepts the fact that you have to vacuum nightly - to outsiders it seems
> like a major flaw with the system.

Okay, this *used* to be a problem way way back, but I definitely don't
vacuum my databases nightly ... most times I don't do it until something
odd comes up that I figure that I may as well vacuum first to see if it
makes a differnece ...

vacuum'ng once a week, unless you one helluva insert/update/delete
intensive table ...

> Sure, the vacuum process speed is fine for small tables, but what about the
> big ones where the table gets locked for 5 minutes?  What a joke!

v7.0beta5, with a table that has *over* 5miillion tuples:

pgsql% time psql -c "vacuum" postgresql
VACUUM
0.000u 0.022s 2:46.67 0.0%      0+0k 0+0io 0pf+0w