Re: disk usage spike

On Aug 7, 2006, at 10:36 PM, Geoff Parker wrote:
> Unfortunately I didn't notice the problem until I saw the logs
> today, and by then it was back tor normal.
>
> Is it safe to assume this is abnormal behaviour?

Probably, unless you had a transaction running for 2 days that was
using space in pgsql_tmp. Another possibility would be if you killed
a backend that had stuff in pgsql_tmp and it didn't clean that up for
some reason, but I don't think it should be possible for that to happen.

There's also the remote possibility that a table bloated due to a lot
of rows being updated, and that table later ended up with a bunch of
empty pages at the end of the table, which vacuum then removed.

> ----- Original Message ----
> From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
> To: Geoff Parker <geoffparkernews(at)yahoo(dot)ca>
> Cc: pgsql admin <pgsql-admin(at)postgresql(dot)org>
> Sent: Tuesday, August 8, 2006 12:12:44 PM
> Subject: Re: [ADMIN] disk usage spike
>
> Geoff Parker <geoffparkernews(at)yahoo(dot)ca> writes:
> > I have a database with about 155GB of binary data in large
> objects and 15GB of data in other tables. In compressed form, it
> consumes about 60GB on disk. On friday, the amount of disk usage
> increased to 240GB (over a period of 5 minutes), stayed at 240GB
> for 2 days, and then returned to 60GB (again over a period of about
> 5 minutes).
>
> It's impossible to say much with only that amount of information.
> If we
> knew what part of the database had bloated (table? index? WAL log?) we
> could perhaps offer some wisdom. Next time, use "du" and and related
> tools to see where the space went.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
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Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant jnasby(at)pervasive(dot)com
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