Re: VERY slow queries at random

On Thu, 7 Jun 2007, Gunther Mayer wrote:

> wal checkpoint config is on pg defaults everywhere, all relevant config
> options are commented out. I'm no expert in wal stuff but I don't see how
> that could cause the problem?

Checkpoints are very resource intensive and can cause other processes
(including your selects) to hang for a considerable period of time while
they are processing. With the default parameters, they can happen very
frequently. Normally checkpoint_segments and checkpoint_timeout are
increased in order to keep this from happening.

This would normally be an issue only if you're writing a substantial
amount of data to your tables. If there are a lot of writes going on, you
might get some improvement by adjusting those parameters upward; the
defaults are pretty low. Make sure you read
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.2/static/wal-configuration.html first so
you know what you're playing with, there are some recovery implications
invoved.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD