Erik Aronesty <erik(at)q32(dot)com> writes:
> but why wasn't autovac enough to reclaim at least *most* of the space?
Autovac isn't meant to reclaim major amounts of bloat; it's more in the
line of trying to prevent it from happening in the first place. To
reclaim bloat it would have to execute VACUUM FULL, or some other
operation that requires exclusive table lock, which doesn't seem like
a good idea for an automatic background operation.
regards, tom lane