rt_sigprocmask

Hi all,
I'm importing on Postgres 7.3.4 a dump and after one hour
the process is still there to perform a COPY of a table with about
~1.5M rows.

I did an strace on it and I had a lot of rt_sigprocmask
comparing to read and write operations.
What is going on?

# strace -p 6370

read(33, "\n\0\0\0|-l\3146\0\0\0\254\1\270\1\0 \1 \264\237\230\0"...,
8192) = 8192
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
_llseek(22, 0, [3268608], SEEK_END) = 0
write(22, "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"...,
8192) = 8192
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
_llseek(21, 0, [3358720], SEEK_END) = 0
write(21, "\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0"...,
8192) = 8192
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_BLOCK, NULL, [], 8) = 0

( here the Load average is 25% because the box have 4 processors )
# iostat 1
Linux 2.4.20-13.9smp (dell-01) 10/10/2003

avg-cpu: %user %nice %sys %idle
6.98 0.02 2.26 90.74

Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
dev8-0 11.39 167.16 151.52 493154000 447007536

avg-cpu: %user %nice %sys %idle
27.00 0.00 1.25 71.75

Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
dev8-0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0

avg-cpu: %user %nice %sys %idle
27.75 0.00 0.75 71.50

Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
dev8-0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0

avg-cpu: %user %nice %sys %idle
25.50 0.00 1.75 72.75

Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
dev8-0 0.00 0.00 0.00 0 0

avg-cpu: %user %nice %sys %idle
26.25 0.00 6.25 67.50

Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
dev8-0 10.00 0.00 200.00 0 200

# vmstat 1
procs memory swap io system
cpu
r b w swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs
us sy id
1 0 0 407940 21588 125596 470968 1 1 3 1 0 0
0 2 0
1 0 0 407940 21588 125596 470968 0 0 0 0 531 480
30 1 69
1 0 0 407940 21588 125624 470964 0 0 0 116 549 494
26 6 68
1 0 0 407940 21588 125624 470964 0 0 0 0 582 499
29 1 70
1 0 0 407940 21588 125624 470964 0 0 0 0 561 517
29 1 69
1 0 0 407940 21588 125624 470964 0 0 0 0 531 537
27 1 71
1 0 0 407940 21588 125624 470964 0 0 0 0 542 470
26 1 73
1 0 0 407940 21584 125636 470964 0 0 0 52 553 493
23 7 71
1 0 0 407940 21584 125636 470972 0 0 0 0 548 491
23 9 68
1 0 0 407940 21584 125636 470972 0 0 0 0 542 498
10 19 71
1 0 0 407940 21584 125636 470972 0 0 0 0 547 472
22 8 70
1 0 0 407940 21584 125636 470972 0 0 0 0 576 512
29 2 69
1 0 0 407940 21584 125640 470968 0 0 0 56 564 510
30 2 68
2 0 0 407940 21584 125640 470976 0 0 0 0 524 509
29 2 69
1 0 0 407940 21584 125640 470976 4 0 4 0 630 634
30 1 69

Regards
Gaetano Mendola