Re: autovacuum not running

[Alvaro Herrera <alvherre(at)commandprompt(dot)com>]

Ben wrote:
> Hm, I assumed it wasn't running because pg_stat_all_tables shows the last
> vacuum from several weeks ago, and this is an active db. Also, I see no 
> vacuum activity in the logs. But "show autovacuum" does show it being 
> on....
>
> So if it is running after all, how can I track down why things aren't 
> getting vacuumed? What log level are the autovacuum logs at?

Right, it is running.  Maybe the problem is that it is selecting one
database all the time and failing to finish vacuuming it for some
reason.  We've actually seen it do that, several times, due to
unfortunate bugs in early 8.1 releases.  AFAIR you are on 8.2.4 so that
doesn't affect you, but maybe there's some other explanation.

As Tom said, you need to move log_min_messages to DEBUG2.  Note that if
there's an ERROR in the autovac process, it doesn't continue running!

-- 
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.