Re: Vacuum takes a really long time, vacuum full required

> Whatever the case, the database still slows down to a halt after a month or
> so, and I have to go in and shut everything down and do a VACUUM FULL by
> hand.  One index (of many many) takes 2000 seconds to vacuum.  The whole
> process takes a few hours.

Do a REINDEX on that table instead, and regular vacuum more frequently.

> $ pg_config --version
>     PostgreSQL 7.3.2

7.4.x deals with index growth a little better 7.3 and older did.