Re: stats collector suddenly causing lots of IO

Josh Kupershmidt <schmiddy@gmail.com> writes:
> I'm not sure whether this is related to the stats collector problems
> on this machine, but I noticed alarming table bloat in the catalog
> tables pg_attribute, pg_attrdef, pg_depend, and pg_type.

Hmm.  That makes me wonder if autovacuum is functioning properly at all.
What does pg_stat_all_tables show for the last vacuum and analyze times
of those tables?  Try something like

select relname,n_live_tup,n_dead_tup,last_vacuum,last_autovacuum,last_analyze,last_autoanalyze from pg_stat_all_tables
whereschemaname = 'pg_catalog' order by 1; 

            regards, tom lane