vacuum problem

Got something really odd happening here.

Simple test program, in java, with jdbc, postgres 7.4.5, on a redhat linux
system... app does a heavy loop of a prepared UPDATE, then Commit, 10000s
of times. the table has a few columns, nothing fancy at all. On our
Redhat Enterprise 2.1 server (dual xeon, 3GB ram, etc), I can't vacuum the
table it generates, it won't free the 'dead' rows...

$ vacuumdb -f -d test -t test -v
INFO: vacuuming "public.test"
INFO: "test": found 0 removable, 373553 nonremovable row versions in 3492
pages
DETAIL: 373533 dead row versions cannot be removed yet.
Nonremovable row versions range from 72 to 72 bytes long.
There were 0 unused item pointers.
Total free space (including removable row versions) is 146596 bytes.
0 pages are or will become empty, including 0 at the end of the table.
1 pages containing 6956 free bytes are potential move destinations.
CPU 0.05s/0.37u sec elapsed 0.41 sec.
INFO: index "test_pkey" now contains 373553 row versions in 1305 pages
DETAIL: 0 index pages have been deleted, 0 are currently reusable.
CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec elapsed 0.00 sec.
INFO: "test": moved 0 row versions, truncated 3492 to 3492 pages
DETAIL: CPU 0.00s/0.00u sec elapsed 0.00 sec.
VACUUM

yet, on an otherwise identical RH Linux 8 system (same java, same app, same
postgres version), it works fine. vacuum gets the free space, I don't even
have to use -f

there are no other connections to this database. It doesn't matter if the
app is still running or not (on the RHL8 system, I can vacuum it while the
app is running, and the space is freed immediately, and the app returns to
full speed, while on the RHEL2.1 system, I can't vacuum it any which ways,
app running or not).

now, if I STOP the postgres server process, and restart it, THEN I can
vacuum it, but thats not acceptible to my actual application, its a 24/7
data extraction process.

we *have* to use RHEL2.1 for this app due to some 3rd party vendor crud
thats only supported there (had glibc problems on RHEL3 with this crudware
which couldn't be resolved by the libc-compatible libraries)

box that works...

$ uname -a
Linux svxeon1 2.4.20-28.8smp #1 SMP Thu Dec 18 12:25:21 EST 2003 i686 i686
i386 GNU/Linux

box that don't work...

$ uname -a
Linux svxeon2.netsys.stsv.seagate.com 2.4.9-e.43enterprise #1 SMP Tue Jun 29
13:57:26 EDT 2004 i686 unknown

And, finally, here's the schema for the test case that shows this problem...

CREATE TABLE test
(
subject varchar(128) NOT NULL,
seq int4 NOT NULL,
reset_time varchar(32) NOT NULL,
CONSTRAINT test_pkey PRIMARY KEY (subject)
)
WITH OIDS;

and, here's the java app (compiled and run with Sun JRE 1.4.2_something)..

(invoked with command: java -cp . PGTest -r 20 -l 50 -c 4000

//package JavaDBI;

//import Flags;
import java.io.*;
import java.sql.*;

public class PGTest
{

public static void main(String[] args)
{

int rowCnt = 20, loopCnt = 50, cycle = 4000, delay = 0;
try {

Connection con_;
String driver_;

Class.forName( "org.postgresql.Driver" );
con_ = DriverManager.getConnection(
"jdbc:postgresql://localhost:5432/test", "test", "test");

PreparedStatement tstStat, updStmt, insStmt, delStmt;
tstStat = con_.prepareStatement("SELECT subject, seq, reset_time FROM
test");
insStmt = con_.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO test VALUES (?,?,?)");
updStmt = con_.prepareStatement("UPDATE test SET seq = ?, reset_time =
? WHERE subject = ?");
delStmt = con_.prepareStatement("DELETE FROM test");

ResultSet rs1_;

Timestamp ts1;
java.util.Date dt1 , dt2, st1, st2;

st1 = new java.util.Date();
dt1 = new java.util.Date();
ts1 = new Timestamp(dt1.getTime() );
rs1_ = tstStat.executeQuery();

System.out.println( "PGTest App" );
/*
while (rs1_.next())
{
System.out.println("-row read-");
System.out.println("control_id:"+rs1_.getString(1));

}
rs1_.close();
System.out.println( "Read from db");
*/

delStmt.execute();
char tmp = 'A';
String[] rowS = new String[rowCnt];
for (int j = 0; j < rowCnt; j++ )
{
rowS[j] = Character.toString(tmp);
insStmt.setString(1, rowS[j]);
insStmt.setInt(2,0);
insStmt.setString(3, dt1.toString());
insStmt.execute();
tmp++;
}
con_.commit();

for (int h = 0; h < cycle; h++ )
{
dt1 = new java.util.Date();
for (int j = 0; j < loopCnt; j++ )
{
for (int i = 0; i < rowCnt; i++ )
{
updStmt.setInt(1, i);
updStmt.setString(2, dt1.toString() );
updStmt.setString(3, rowS[i]);
updStmt.execute();
con_.commit();
//System.out.println( i );
if (delay > 0)
{
try {
Thread.sleep(delay); // 100 ms sleep
} catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println("Waiting");
//blah
}
}
}
}
dt2 = new java.util.Date();
System.out.println( "Processing took:" + (dt2.getTime() -
dt1.getTime()) +
" for " + (rowCnt*loopCnt) + " rows");
}

con_.commit();
st2 = new java.util.Date();
System.out.println( "Total time:" + (st2.getTime() - st1.getTime()) );

} catch (Exception ex) {
System.out.println( "Error WR" );
System.out.println( ex.toString() );
}
}

} // end PGTest