why so much freaking swap?!?!?

i've got a database with several million records.

i've found that from time to time i need to nuke the primary index in order
to get a vacuum done on it.

i don't like this, but i can live with it.

now, i'm vacuuming it and the backen process is growing to enormous size:

(i was gonna cut and paste part of a top session here, but the vacuum just
blew out the 750M swap partition on the server, and now i need to reboot it).

why does this vacuum require so much core memory?

--
[ Jim Mercer Reptilian Research jim(at)reptiles(dot)org +1 416 410-5633 ]
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[ communications technology in the days before electronic mail. ]
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