Re: Disc space usage

On Wed, 8 Oct 2008, Tom Lane wrote:
>> It appears that there are a few large directories that do not correspond
>> to any database. I wonder if these have been left behind accidentally by
>> Postgres.
>
> Anything under $PGDATA/base that doesn't correspond to a live row in
> pg_database is junk.

So I can delete it? Might be safer to stop the db server while I do that
though.

> The interesting question is how it got that way, and in particular how
> you seem to have managed to have repeated instances of it.
>
> I gather that you're in the habit of using CREATE DATABASE to copy
> large existing databases, so the most likely theory is that these are
> leftovers from previous failed copy attempts.  Now CREATE DATABASE
> does attempt to clean up if its copying fails, but there are various
> ways to break that, for instance hitting control-C partway through the
> cleanup phase.  So I'm wondering if maybe that's been done a few times.

Yes, we do copy large databases quite often, and drop them again. The
database cluster was initialised back in March.

> What PG version is this, anyway?

Postgres 8.3.0

Matthew

--
Unfortunately, university regulations probably prohibit me from eating
small children in front of the lecture class.
                                        -- Computer Science Lecturer