Re: Autovacuum / full vacuum

Chris Browne <cbbrowne@acm.org> writes:
> alvherre@alvh.no-ip.org (Alvaro Herrera) writes:
>> Even a database-wide vacuum does not take locks on more than one table.
>> The table locks are acquired and released one by one, as the operation
>> proceeds.

> Has that changed recently?  I have always seen "vacuumdb" or SQL
> "VACUUM" (without table specifications) running as one long
> transaction which doesn't release the locks that it is granted until
> the end of the transaction.

You sure?  It's not supposed to, and watching a database-wide vacuum
with "select * from pg_locks" doesn't look to me like it ever has locks
on more than one table (plus the table's indexes and toast table).

            regards, tom lane