Re: Vaccuming on 7.1.3

On Thu, 11 Jul 2002, Auri Mason wrote:

> Good, but the documentation reports:
> - Beginning in PostgreSQL 7.2, the standard form of VACUUM can run in
> parallel with normal database operations. If my DB is a 7.1.3 what
> happens?

IIRC, it grabs an exclusive lock on the table it's working on, so other
transactions block for the vacuum to finish.

> - Prior to PostgreSQL 7.2, the only defense against XID wraparound was
> to re-initdb at least every 4 billion transactions. And in the 7.1.3
> Is it safe to run the vaccum on a production DB?

As long as you can live with the delay in queries, it should be barring
any bugs I can't think of.

> I've also planned to setup a ramdisk to improve the performances.. is
> it a good choice?

Unless your dataset is really small, you're probably better off with
increasing shared buffers and letting the OS disk buffers take care of it.

BTW: You may want to consider upgrading in general... :)