Re: Details about pg_stat_bgwriter

Scott Marlowe wrote:
>> -Average checkpoint frequency
>> -Average size of each checkpoint
>> -Average rate at which new buffers are allocated
>> -Average rate of writes out of the buffer cache
>> -Percentage of writes done by checkpoints, the background writer LRU
>> cleaner, and client backends
>>
>
> I think you get all or most of that if you just log checkpoints.
>

If you turned on log_checkpoints, and you went through a whole stack of
logs summarizing the data it writes out, you can derive the first two of
those from it. I happen to think that sampling two data points and
pasting into a spreadsheet is less hassle to deal with, and the data is
definitely there by default. You can answer questions like "what's the
biggest checkpoint I've seen?" from the stuff in the logs a bit easier
than from pg_stat_bgwriter.

After for the rest, checkpoints are one of the three possible ways that
buffers can be written out. The other two are the background writer's
cleaning and client backends. log_checkpoints gives you the size of one
of those sources of writes. You can also compute an estimated
proportion between the three types of writes from a single snapshot of
pg_stat_bgwriter data. But that doesn't help once you've reached the
point where you want to change something and measure how response
changes afterwards. That requires more regularly sampling the data, so
you have a delta between two times.

--
Greg Smith 2ndQuadrant US Baltimore, MD
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
greg(at)2ndQuadrant(dot)com www.2ndQuadrant.us