Re: Extremely slow server?

On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 6:54 PM, Craig James <cjames(at)emolecules(dot)com> wrote:

> On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 11:36 AM, bricklen <bricklen(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Sep 14, 2013 at 11:28 AM, Craig James <cjames(at)emolecules(dot)com>wrote:
>>
>>> I'm trying to do a pg_dump of a database, and it more-or-less just sits
>>> there doing nothing.
>>>
>>
>> What is running in the db? Perhaps there is something blocking the
>> pg_dump? What does the output of the following query look like?
>>
>> select * from pg_stat_activity where pid <> pg_backend_pid()
>>
>>
> =# select * from pg_stat_activity where pid <> pg_backend_pid();
> datid | datname | pid | usesysid | usename | application_name |
> client_addr | client_hostname | client_port | backend_start
> | xact_start | query_start |
> state_change | waiting | state |
> query
>
> --------+------------+-------+----------+----------+------------------+-------------+-----------------+-------------+------------------------------
>
> -+-------------------------------+------------------------------+-------------------------------+---------+--------+-------------------------------
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 231308 | emolecules | 13312 | 10 | postgres | pg_dump
> | | | -1 | 2013-09-14
> 18:37:08.752938-07
> | 2013-09-14 18:37:08.783782-07 | 2013-09-14 18:39:43.74618-07 |
> 2013-09-14 18:39:43.746181-07 | f | active | COPY
> orders.chmoogle_thesaurus
> (thesaurus_id, version_id, normalized, identifier, typecode) TO stdout;
>

I don't have any solutions at the moment, but three things come to mind:

1). Try without "--blobs",
2). Does "strace -p <pid of pg_dump process>" show anything unusual? Futex?
Lots of semops?
3). Does "pg_dump -f your_file.out -U postgres -Fc emolecules" act any
different than redirecting STDOUT to a file?