Re: Question about VACUUM

Joey K. wrote:
>> Is it possible to estimate how long VACUUM on a table might take?
>
>> The table size is growing as "VACUUM" is being performed. I assume I need
> reindex after VACUUM is complete.
>
>> I run VACUUM from psql and I Ctrl-C it to turn it off is this acceptable?
>
>> maintenance_work_mem is at 64MB and shared_buffers at 2GB. Should I
> dedicate more memory to maintenance_work_mem to speedup VACUUM?
>
> The server is a Intel Xeon 3.0GHz with 4GB RAM and RAID-5 (Yes I know).
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Steve

Hello Joey,

an alternative to vacuum might be to use cluster on the big tables. The
documentation on that feature is here:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/static/sql-cluster.html

To my knowledge vacuum full might add to index bloat, I'm not sure about
plain vacuum. I'd increase maintenance_work_mem to at least 256 MB and
lower shared_buffers a bit.

It should be OK to Ctrl-C a vacuum task in psql.

--
Best regards,
Hannes Dorbath