Re: Status of autovacuum and the sporadic stats failures ?

Stefan Kaltenbrunner wrote:
> I'm still getting random failures from some of my buildfarm members
> which is starting to get a bit irritating and annoying :-(
>
> some recent failures:
>
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=zebra&dt=2007-02-06%2015:25:04
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=clownfish&dt=2007-02-06%2000:03:04
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=clownfish&dt=2007-02-04%2003:03:09
> http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=impala&dt=2007-02-02%2003:03:02
>
>
> any ideas ?

Since they are sporadic, my guess is that it's due to autovacuum not
letting pgstat catch up. I'd try either setting
autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay to a low value, or extending the sleep
period in the stats test, to give more time for pgstat to catch up with
those messages.

Setting the cost_delay sounds a reasonable thing to do anyway, and in
fact I already proposed it and nobody objected (AFAIR). Now we only
have to agree on a reasonable value.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support