Re: [HACKERS] More detail on settings for pgavd?

Shridhar Daithankar wrote:

> Matthew T. O'Connor wrote:
>
>> But we track tuples because we can compare against the count given by
>> the stats system. I don't know of a way (other than looking at the
>> FSM, or contrib/pgstattuple ) to see how many dead pages exist.
>
> I think making pg_autovacuum dependent of pgstattuple is very good idea.

Only if pgstattuple can become much cheaper than it is now. Based on
the testing I did when I wrote pg_autovacuum, pgstattuple cost nearly
the same amount as a regular vacuum. Given that, what have we gained
from that work? Wouldn't it just be better to run a vacuum and actually
reclaim space rather than running pgstattuple, and just look and see if
there is free space to be reclaimed?

Perhaps we could use pgstattuple ocasionally to see if we are going a
good job of keeping the amount of dead space to a reasonable level, but
I'm still not really sure about this.

> Probably it might be a good idea to extend pgstattuple to return pages
> that are excessively contaminated and clean them ASAP. Step by step
> getting closer to daemonized vacuum.

I don't know of anyway to clean a particular set of pages. This is
something that has been talked about (partial vacuums and such), but I
think Tom has raised several issues with it, I don't remember the
details. Right now the only tool we have to reclaim space is vacuum, a
whole table at a time.