Re: Remove autovacuum GUC?

On 10/20/2016 07:12 AM, Robert Haas wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 19, 2016 at 9:24 PM, Joshua D. Drake <jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
>
> Setting autovacuum=off is at least useful for testing purposes and
> I've used it that way. On the other hand, I haven't seen a customer
> disable this unintentionally in years. Generally, the customers I've
> worked with have found subtler ways of hosing themselves with
> autovacuum. One of my personal favorites is autovacuum_naptime='1 d'
> -- for the record, that did indeed work out very poorly.

Yes, I have seen that as well and you are right, it ends poorly.

>
> I think that this the kind of problem that can only properly be solved
> by education. If somebody thinks that they want to turn off
> autovacuum, and you keep them from turning it off, they just get
> frustrated. Sometimes, they then find a back-door way of getting what

I think I am coming at this from a different perspective than the
-hackers. Let me put this another way.

The right answer isn't the answer founded in the reality for many if not
most of our users.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that the right answer for -hackers isn't necessarily the right
answer for users. Testing? Users don't test. They deploy. Education? If
most people read the docs, CMD and a host of other companies would be
out of business.

I am not saying I have the right solution but I am saying I think we
need a *different* solution. Something that limits a *USERS* choice to
turn off autovacuum. If -hackers need testing or enterprise developers
need testing, let's account for that but for the user that says this:

My machine/instance bogs down every time autovacuum runs, oh I can turn
it off....

Let's fix *that* problem.

Sincerely,

JD

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