Re: exponential performance decrease in ISD transaction

On Mon, Sep 3, 2012 at 4:22 AM, John Nash
<postgres(dot)dba(dot)needs(dot)help(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We can try installing version 8.4.9, but when downloading the
> software, we installed the binaries and files given in postgresql web
> page named as version 9.1.3. This is the tar file downloaded:
>
> postgresql-9.1.3.tar
>
> Containing the following when un-tar-ed:
>
> [postgsql(at)localhost postgresql-9.1.3]$ pwd
> /postgresql/postgresql-9.1.3
> [postgsql(at)localhost postgresql-9.1.3]$ ll
> total 2528
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 385 Feb 23 2012 aclocal.m4
> drwxrwxrwx 2 postgsql gpostgre 4096 Feb 24 2012 config
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 326754 Jun 4 10:30 config.log
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 37900 Jun 4 10:30 config.status
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 866562 Feb 23 2012 configure
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 63599 Feb 23 2012 configure.in
> drwxrwxrwx 51 postgsql gpostgre 4096 Feb 24 2012 contrib
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 1192 Feb 23 2012 COPYRIGHT
> drwxrwxrwx 3 postgsql gpostgre 4096 Feb 24 2012 doc
> -rw-r--r-- 1 postgsql gpostgre 3741 Jun 4 10:30 GNUmakefile
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 3741 Feb 23 2012 GNUmakefile.in
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 1165183 Feb 24 2012 HISTORY
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 76550 Feb 24 2012 INSTALL
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 1489 Feb 23 2012 Makefile
> -rwxrwxrwx 1 postgsql gpostgre 1284 Feb 23 2012 README
> drwxrwxrwx 14 postgsql gpostgre 4096 Jun 4 10:30 src

Hi John,

downloading and untarring is not enough, you have to configure,
compile, and install it as well. (Which you may have done)

In any case, it is perfectly possible to have multiple versions
installed simultaneously. If I had to guess, I would say that 8.4.9
came already installed with your OS, and you accidentally started up
that preinstalled version instead of the one you intended.

You can often find the absolute path to the binary that is actually
running by doing:

ps -efl|fgrep /postg

And then make sure that that is the one you think it is.

You can also look in the file "PG_VERSION" in the data directory.

In any case, the behavior you report is exactly would would be
expected if autovacuum is not running. The config file you posted
shows autovac is turned on, but I suspect that is not the config file
actually being used by the running server.

Cheers,

Jeff