Nooby Q: Should this take five hours? And counting?

ie, 5hrs and counting, no clue how long it intends to run, but methinks
this is insane even if it is 10^7 records, mebbe half a dozen dups per
value (a product-id usually around 8-chars long):

CREATE INDEX web_source_items_by_item_id_strip
                ON web_source_items
                USING btree (item_id_strip);

Am I unreasonably impatient?

I see pg getting just a few % CPU on a heavily ram/core-endowed Sun box
with nothing else going on. Mebbe they installed pg on a compact flash?
DVD-RW? /usr/local/something, prolly not.

Jes pestering you all while I wait, insights welcome.

kenneth