BUG #1160: Postgres causing system to halt

The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference: 1160
Logged by: Neeraj K Sharma

Email address: neeraj(dot)sharma(at)arroyo(dot)tv

PostgreSQL version: 7.3.4

Operating system: Redhat linux 7.3

Description: Postgres causing system to halt

Details:

Hi

I am using Postgres 7.3.4 over linux Redhat 7.3 on i686 machine.

My app has one parent table and five child tables. I mean the parent table
has a primary key and child tables have foreign key relationship with
parent.
My App is doing 500 inserts initially in each table. After all this done, we
inserting 50 in each table and deleting previous 50 records every seconds.
System performs well for awhile (<30 Hrs). After 30 hrs I seen that dir size
of $PGDATA/base dir is keep on growing and to goes up to 2G in 48 hrs. App
is also doing vacuum every 45 seconds. Every time vacuum is triggered, the
system goes extreamly slugginsh, and results in various errors like deadlock
detected(confirmed in the $PGDATA/../LOG/logfile).
vmstat is also showing that blocks sents to the block device (disk) is going
crazy.
I do not know what is the remedy for this problem. If someone has come
across to the issue, please help me as soon as possible.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
NOTE: I can not use Postgres 7.4 and higher releases beacuse postmaster
crashes gauranteed in (20hrs). I have already reported this bug many times
(Bug # 1104 is one of them). All crashes show the same behavior
and error messages.
(specified item offset is too large)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

I appreciate if some one have the solution for my problem. otherwise it
looks like all our app development done on top of Postgres is going in vain.

Thanking you in advance.

Neeraj K Sharma
email: neeraj(dot)sharma(at)arroyo(dot)tv
neerajsharma(at)hotmail(dot)com