Re: Problem with copying data

Alan Hodgson  writes:
> On Friday 06 April 2007 13:17, Klaas Dellschaft  
> wrote:
>> I'm currently trying to copy two large files (1.6 GB and 3.5 GB) with a
>> "COPY FROM" into my database. But I'm waiting for the completion of this
>> job since more than 24h. I'm working under Linux and with "top" I can
>> see the two processes which should copy the data but most of the time
>> they are not working. Very seldom they are using some CPU time and then
>> get idle again.

> What does the wait % (%wa) say when they are "idle"?  I would generally 
> assume you're io-bound on a large COPY, especially if the target table is 
> already indexed.  24-hours seems excessive, though, unless this is a 
> notebook drive or something.

If there's other things going on in the database, then another
possibility is that the COPY commands are blocked on locks.
I agree that I/O is the most likely time sink though.

			regards, tom lane