Re: waiting for harddisk

On Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 7:05 AM, petchimuthu lingam <spmlingam(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> i am using postgresql 8.1.8,
>
> Following configurations:
> shared_buffers = 5000
> work_mem = 65536
> maintenance_work_mem = 65536
> effective_cache_size = 16000
> random_page_cost = 0.1

That number, 0.1 is not logical. anything below 1.0 is generally a
bad idea, and means that you've got some other setting wrong.

> The cpu is waiting percentage goes upto 50%, and query result comes later,
>
> i am using normal select query ( select * from table_name ).
>
> table has more then 6 million records.

You need faster disks if you want sequential scans to go faster. Look
into a decent RAID controller (Areca, Escalade (forgot what they're
called now) or LSI) with battery backed cache. Run RAID-10 on it with
as many drives as you can afford to throw at the problem.