On 30/01/2011, at 12:27, Craig Ringer wrote: > > OK, so you're pre-8.4 , which means you have the max_fsm settings to play > with. Have you seen any messages in the logs about the free space map (fsm)? > If your install didn't have a big enough fsm to keep track of deleted tuples, > you'd face massive table bloat that a regular vacuum couldn't fix.
Ouch. You're absolutely right. There are messages about max_fsm_pages in the postgres log. It's currently set to 153600. According to the documentation, I can increase it up to 200000. Will that even help? How do I find out how many I need to set it to? > > You also don't have the visibility map, which means that (auto)vacuum can't > skip bits of the tables it knows don't need vacuuming. Your vacuums will be > slower. > > Autovacuum improved significantly in both 8.4 and 9.0; consider an upgrade. I will consider it. Thank you. Herouth