Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> We am running a web application on ubuntu 10.10 using postgres 8.4.3.
Current release in that branch is 8.4.14. (By this time next week
it'll be 8.4.15.) You are missing a lot of bug fixes:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/release.html
> Trying to interpret this, does this mean that the autovacuum process is
> holding a lock which is required tn order to complete the select
> query?
Possibly. Looking into the pg_locks view would tell you more.
regards, tom lane