Обсуждение: pg_attribute growing and growing and growing
Hi, I'm having a bit of trouble with the pg_attribute table growing larger and larger and larger. Actually that's now the real problem, it's the indexes that are the real problem. I run a site that get's a fair amount of traffic and we use temporary table extensively for some more complex queries (because by breaking down the queries into steps, we can get better performance than by letting postgres plan the query poorly) I assume that creating a temporary table and then dropping it will cause the pg_attribute table to grow because our pg_attribute grows by about 15MB per day and if it isn't vacuumed nightly the system slows down very quickly. After "vacuum analyze pg_attribute", the pg_attribute table is back to it's normal small size. However, the two indexes on pg_attribute do not shrink at all. The only way I've found to get around this is to dump, drop, create, reload the database. I don't really want to trust that to a script and I don't really like having the system down that much. My questions are: 1) is this problem being worked on?2) are there any better work arounds that what I'm doing?3) if this problem isn't beingworked on, is it too complex for a non-experienced postgres coder to tackle? 4) if answers to #3 are no & no, any advice on where to start? System infopsql: 7.0.2PIII 400, Linux 6.2, 512MB memory, etc, etc... -- The world's most ambitious and comprehensive PC game database project. http://www.mobygames.com
> -----Original Message----- > From: Brian Hirt > > Hi, > > I'm having a bit of trouble with the pg_attribute table growing larger > and larger and larger. Actually that's now the real problem, it's > the indexes that are the real problem. I run a site that get's a fair > amount of traffic and we use temporary table extensively for some more > complex queries (because by breaking down the queries into steps, > we can get > better performance than by letting postgres plan the query poorly) I > assume that creating a temporary table and then dropping it will cause > the pg_attribute table to grow because our pg_attribute grows by > about 15MB > per day and if it isn't vacuumed nightly the system slows down very > quickly. After "vacuum analyze pg_attribute", the pg_attribute table is > back to it's normal small size. However, the two indexes on > pg_attribute do > not shrink at all. The only way I've found to get around this is to > dump, drop, create, reload the database. I don't really want to trust > that to a script and I don't really like having the system down that much. > If you could stop postmaster,you could reacreate indexes of pg_attribute as follows. 1) shutdown postmaster(using pg_ctl stop etc). 2) backup the index files of pg_attributes somewhere for safety. 3) invoke standalone postgrespostgres -P -O your_database_name 4) recreate indexes of pg_attributereindex table pg_attribute force; 5) exit standalone postgres 6) restart postmaster Regards. Hiroshi Inoue Inoue@tpf.co.jp
Brian Hirt <bhirt@mobygames.com> writes: > I run a site that get's a fair amount of traffic and we use temporary > table extensively for some more complex queries (because by breaking > down the queries into steps, we can get better performance than by > letting postgres plan the query poorly) I assume that creating a > temporary table and then dropping it will cause the pg_attribute table > to grow because our pg_attribute grows by about 15MB per day and if it > isn't vacuumed nightly the system slows down very quickly. After > "vacuum analyze pg_attribute", the pg_attribute table is back to it's > normal small size. However, the two indexes on pg_attribute do not > shrink at all. Indexes in general are not shrunk by vacuum. The only clean solution I see for this is to convert vacuum to do the "drop/rebuild index" business internally --- but AFAICS we can't do that safely without some sort of file versioning solution. See past threads in pghackers. Possibly a better short-term attack is to eliminate the need for so many temp tables. What's your gripe about bad planning, exactly? Another possibility, which just screams HACK but might fix your problem, is to swap the order of the columns in the two indexes on pg_attribute: foo=# \d pg_attribute_relid_attnam_index Index "pg_attribute_relid_attnam_index"Attribute | Type -----------+------attrelid | oidattname | name unique btree foo=# \d pg_attribute_relid_attnum_index Index "pg_attribute_relid_attnum_index"Attribute | Type -----------+----------attrelid | oidattnum | smallint unique btree Since table OIDs keep increasing, this formulation ensures that new entries will always sort to the end of the index, and so space freed internally in the indexes can never get re-used. Swapping the column order may eliminate that problem --- but I'm not sure what if any speed penalty would be incurred. Thoughts anyone? regards, tom lane