I verified the patch "v2-0001-Free-disk-space-for-dropped-relations-on-commit.patch" on master branch "0cc99327888840f2bf572303b68438e4caf62de9". It works for me. Below is my test procedure and results.
=== Before the patch === #1 from psql console 1, create table and index then insert enough data postgres=# CREATE TABLE test_tbl ( a int, b text); postgres=# CREATE INDEX idx_test_tbl on test_tbl (a); postgres=# INSERT INTO test_tbl SELECT generate_series(1,80000000),'Hello world!'; postgres=# INSERT INTO test_tbl SELECT generate_series(1,80000000),'Hello world!'; #2 check files size david:12867$ du -h 12G . #3 from psql console 2, drop the index postgres=# drop index idx_test_tbl; #4 check files size in different ways, david:12867$ du -h 7.8G . david:12867$ ls -l ... -rw------- 1 david david 0 Nov 23 20:07 16402 ... $ lsof -nP | grep '(deleted)' |grep pgdata ... postgres 25736 david 45u REG 259,2 0 12592758 /home/david/sandbox/postgres/pgdata/base/12867/16402 (deleted) postgres 25736 david 49u REG 259,2 1073741824 12592798 /home/david/sandbox/postgres/pgdata/base/12867/16402.1 (deleted) postgres 25736 david 53u REG 259,2 1073741824 12592739 /home/david/sandbox/postgres/pgdata/base/12867/16402.2 (deleted) postgres 25736 david 59u REG 259,2 372604928 12592800 /home/david/sandbox/postgres/pgdata/base/12867/16402.3 (deleted) ... The index relnode id "16402" displays size "0" from postgres database folder, but when using lsof to check, all 16402.x are still in used by a psql connection except 16402 is set to 0. Check it again after an hour, lsof shows the same results. === After the patch === Repeat step 1 ~ 4, lsof shows all the index relnode files (in this case, the index relnode id 16389) are removed within about 1 minute. $ lsof -nP | grep '(deleted)' |grep pgdata ... postgres 32707 david 66u REG 259,2 0 12592763 /home/david/sandbox/postgres/pgdata/base/12867/16389.1 (deleted) postgres 32707 david 70u REG 259,2 0 12592823 /home/david/sandbox/postgres/pgdata/base/12867/16389.2 (deleted) postgres 32707 david 74u REG 259,2 0 12592805 /home/david/sandbox/postgres/pgdata/base/12867/16389.3 (deleted) ... One thing interesting for me is that, if the index is created after data records has been inserted, then lsof doesn't show this issue.
