Tom --
----- Original Message -----
> From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
> To: Greg Williamson <gwilliamson39@yahoo.com>
> Cc: "pgsql-admin@postgresql.org" <pgsql-admin@postgresql.org>
> Sent: Thursday, September 27, 2012 7:55 PM
> Subject: Re: [ADMIN] Database size stays constant but disk space keeps shrinking -- postgres 9.1
>
>G reg Williamson <gwilliamson39@yahoo.com> writes:
>>>> postgres 2540 postgres 50u REG 8,3
> 409600 93429 /var/lib/postgresql/9.1/main/base/2789200/11816 (deleted)
>>>> postgres 2540 postgres 51u REG 8,3
> 18112512 49694570 /var/lib/postgresql/9.1/main/base/2789200/2791679 (deleted)
>
>> Thanks for the suggestions -- I'll post back when I have more info.
> Many of these do not seem to have a link to any identifiable process that is
> still running, but some do and they have pointed me away from the hourly drop /
> rebuild, at least for now. Looks like the stats database may be the issue.
>
> BTW, looking at that again --- the filenames appear to be ordinary
> tables in database 2789200, but there is something mighty odd about the
> first one: 11816 is an OID that should only be handed out during initdb.
> And in 9.1 what it would be handed out to is pg_shdescription. Now it's
> not impossible that pg_shdescription's original table file would get
> deleted: a VACUUM FULL or CLUSTER on that catalog would do it. But
> AFAICS there is no situation in which that relfilenode number would
> appear in a regular database --- it should be under the global/
> subdirectory of $PGDATA. So unless you miscopied that filename, there
> is something odd going on here above and beyond the problem of open
> file descriptors not getting closed.
Nope -- a sim-ple copy that seems to have gotten all of the data output.
> Do you have any nonstandard
> maintenance practices in this installation, such as doing database-wide
> VACUUM FULL every so often?
None that I know of -- logs don't show any. and there are none on cronjobs. I'm asking the developers behind this app
--they may be doing something strange. I'll post back as they answer.
Thanks hugely,
Greg W.