Kevin Kempter <kevin@kevinkempterllc.com> writes:
> 3) we did a pg_dump and a reload into a database on the test box and the table
> is still 30Gig.
You need to find out *exactly* what they did there.
The idea that comes to mind is that they dropped and reloaded the table
itself, but didn't do anything about cleaning out pg_largeobject, and
when they say "the table is still 30Gig" they actually mean the whole
database directory is still 30Gig.
If there are no other tables storing large objects in the database,
dropping and reloading the whole database is probably the simplest
solution. Otherwise they're going to need to make sure the unwanted
LOs have been cleaned out (see contrib/vacuumlo) and then do a VACUUM
FULL or similar on pg_largeobject.
regards, tom lane