Re: deadlock under load

Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@gmail.com> writes:
> We am running a web application on ubuntu 10.10 using postgres 8.4.3.

Current release in that branch is 8.4.14.  (By this time next week
it'll be 8.4.15.)  You are missing a lot of bug fixes:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.4/static/release.html

> Trying to interpret this, does this mean that the autovacuum process is
> holding a lock which is required tn order to complete the select
> query?

Possibly.  Looking into the pg_locks view would tell you more.

            regards, tom lane