Re: autovacuum on a -mostly- r/o table

Bill Moran wrote:
> In response to Edoardo Ceccarelli <eddy(at)axa(dot)it>:
>>
>> I have read that autovacuum cannot check to see pg load before launching
>> vacuum but is there any patch about it? that would sort out the problem
>> in a good and simple way.
>> Otherwise, which kind of set of parameters I should put in autovacuum
>> configuration? I am stuck because in our case the table gets mostly read
>> and if I set up things as to vacuum the table after a specific amount of
>> insert/updates, I cannot foresee whether this could happen during
>> daytime when server is under high load.
>> How can I configure the vacuum to run after the daily batch insert/update?
>>
>
> It doesn't sound as if your setup is a good match for autovacuum. You
> might be better off going back to the cron vacuums. That's the
> beauty of Postgres -- it gives you the choice.
>
> If you want to continue with autovac, you may want to experiment with
> vacuum_cost_delay and associated parameters, which can lessen the
> impact of vacuuming.
>
>
The db is constantly monitored during high peak so that we can switch to
a backup pg7.3 database that is being vacuumed every night.
This is giving me the opportunity to try it so I tried this:

vacuum_cost_delay = 200
vacuum_cost_page_hit = 5
vacuum_cost_page_miss = 10
vacuum_cost_page_dirty = 20
vacuum_cost_limit = 100

I know these values affect the normal vacuum process but apparently this
means setting
#autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay = -1 # default vacuum cost delay for
# autovac, -1 means use
# vacuum_cost_delay

and
#autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit = -1 # default vacuum cost limit for
# autovac, -1 means use
# vacuum_cost_limit

for the rest of them I am currently trying the deafults:

#autovacuum_naptime = 60 # time between autovacuum runs,
in secs
#autovacuum_vacuum_threshold = 1000 # min # of tuple updates before
vacuum
#autovacuum_analyze_threshold = 500 # min # of tuple updates before
analyze
#autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor = 0.4 # fraction of rel size before vacuum
#autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor = 0.2 # fraction of rel size before
analyze

Does anybody know which process is actually AUTO-vacuum-ing the db?
So that I can check when is running...