Postgres Hanging on Inserts

My application involves inserting new records into a table and altering a record in another table in a postgres database version 7.3.3 several times a second . Each instance of my application inserts into the same table and changes a different row of the updating table.

My problem is that on occasion (from several minuets to several hours) all of my inserts will stop and will ps -ef tells me that they are waiting for something. I have waited several hours and they have never stopped waiting.

I looked into pg_locks and they are all waiting to get an exclusive lock on the same relation. Is there anyway for me to tell what this relation is? Does anyone know what it could be and how I can fix this problem?

--- Adam Kavan
--- American Amuesments
--- akavan(at)cox(dot)net
--- 402-499-5145