Re: Track skipped tables during autovacuum and autoanalyze

On Wed, 25 Mar 2026 11:07:08 +0900
Michael Paquier <michael(at)paquier(dot)xyz> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 25, 2026 at 01:28:47AM +0900, Yugo Nagata wrote:
> > Although the timestamps are overwritten on each skipped autovacuum or
> > autoanalyze, they still indicate when the last attempt was made. This
> > can help users confirm that autovacuum is actively attempting to run,
> > and that the issue is due to repeated skips rather than inactivity.
> >
> > While counters can indicate overall activity, they do not reveal when
> > the last skip occurred. With timestamps, users can immediately see the
> > most recent attempt, even without a separate dashboard or historical
> > tracking.
> >
> > Therefore, counters are useful for monitoring overall activity, but
> > timestamps give additional, complementary information, so it seems
> > worthwhile to include them too.
>
> Hmm.. I can buy this argument for the timestamps, especially for
> database with many relations of various sizes that could take a
> various amount of time to process. The timestamps could offer hints
> about the time it takes between the skips, even if snapshots of the
> stats data are not taken at a very aggressive frequency.
>
> This is v20 material at this stage, of course..

Thank you for your comments.
Yes, I understand that it's too late for this to be included in v19.

Regards,
Yugo Nagata

--
Yugo Nagata <nagata(at)sraoss(dot)co(dot)jp>