Re: reindexdb script required in 8.1?

On Mar 7, 2006, at 8:06 PM, David Wall wrote:

> I've upgraded from 8.0 to 8.1 and want to be sure I'm making the
> changes that are required.
>
> For my backups, I have removed the option --blobs because it says
> this is no longer needed. I guess the backup automatically
> includes blobs now?

You do periodically test your recovery process, right? If not, now's
a good time to start. :) I don't know off-hand if blobs are
automatically included, but the release notes should tell you. If
you're using SQL dumps you could also just look.

> I have also been running the contributed 'reindexdb' script by
> Shaun Thomas in my backups. Is that still necessary? It does not
> appear to be part of the contrib area anymore.

AFAIK all functionality of that script is included in the built-in
REINDEX now. In particular REINDEX DATABASE was changed to vacuum
user tables instead of system tables. See also http://
www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/interactive/sql-reindex.html

BTW, are you sure you need to do that? Index bloat is far less of a
problem now than it used to be, especially if you're vacuuming
frequently enough.

> Also, my backup scripts still run vacuumlo. I rebuilt that in 8.1
> and am using that. Is that still required or is vacuumlo part of
> the new 8.1 vacuum capabilities?

Hrm, dunno. Check the release notes. If it's still in 8.1 contrib I'd
bet it's not built-in though.

> Lastly, do I still need to run vacuum analyze from time to time
> update my stats, or is that done automatically? I read about how
> some vacuums are automatic, but it's not clear if this auto-vacuum
> is activated by default or not and I'm not sure how I specify that
> I want this to occur.

contrib/pgautovacuum is now built in, with expanded capabilities, but
you have to specifically enable it. I'd also drop the thresholds to
0.2 and 0.1 (vacuum/analyze) and drop the limits from 1000/500 to
300/150.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
Pervasive Software http://pervasive.com work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf cell: 512-569-9461