Re: Autovacuum, dead tuples and bloat

Thanks for the suggestions.
I checked pg_locks  shows and pg_stat_activity but I could not find a LOCK or an transaction on this (at this point in time).

I assume that this problem may relate to long running transactions which write a lot of data. Is there already something in place that would help me to:
1) identify long running transactions

2) get an idea of the data-volume a single transaction writes?

I tested the log_statement='mod' but this writes too much data (including all payloads). I rather would like to get a summary entry of each transaction like:
"Tx 4752 run for 1hour and 1GB data was written."

Is there something like this already available in postgres?

Best regards,
Manuel

-----Original Message-----
From: Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com>
Sent: 22 June 2024 23:17
To: Shenavai, Manuel <manuel.shenavai@sap.com>; Achilleas Mantzios <a.mantzios@cloud.gatewaynet.com>; pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Autovacuum, dead tuples and bloat

On 6/22/24 13:13, Shenavai, Manuel wrote:
> Thanks for the suggestion. This is what I found:
>
> - pg_locks  shows only one entry for my DB (I filtered by db oid). The entry is related to the relation "pg_locks" (AccessShareLock).

Which would be the SELECT you did on pg_locks.

> - pg_stat_activity shows ~30 connections (since the DB is in use, this is expected)

The question then is, are any of those 30 connections holding a
transaction open that needs to see the data in the affected table and is
keeping autovacuum from recycling the tuples?

You might need to look at the Postgres logs to determine the above.
Logging connections/disconnections helps as well at least 'mod' statements.

See:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/runtime-config-logging.html#RUNTIME-CONFIG-LOGGING-WHAT

for more information.

>
> Is there anything specific I should further look into in these tables?
>
> Regarding my last post: Did we see a problem in the logs I provided in my previous post? We have seen that there are 819294 n_live_tup in the toast-table. Do we know how much space these tuple use?  Do we know how much space one tuple use?

You will want to read:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/storage-toast.html

Also:

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/functions-admin.html

9.27.7. Database Object Management Functions

There are functions there that show table sizes among other things.

>
> Best regards,
> Manuel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adrian Klaver <adrian.klaver@aklaver.com>
> Sent: 21 June 2024 22:39
> To: Shenavai, Manuel <manuel.shenavai@sap.com>; Achilleas Mantzios <a.mantzios@cloud.gatewaynet.com>; pgsql-general@lists.postgresql.org
> Subject: Re: Autovacuum, dead tuples and bloat
>
> On 6/21/24 12:31, Shenavai, Manuel wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> Thanks for the suggestions. I found the following details to our
>> autovacuum (see below). The related toast-table of my table shows some
>> logs related the vacuum. This toast seems to consume all the data
>> (27544451 pages * 8kb ≈ 210GB )
>
> Those tuples(pages) are still live per the pg_stat entry in your second
> post:
>
> "n_dead_tup": 12,
> "n_live_tup": 819294
>
> So they are needed.
>
> Now the question is why are they needed?
>
> 1) All transactions that touch that table are done and that is the data
> that is left.
>
> 2) There are open transactions that still need to 'see' that data and
> autovacuum cannot remove them yet. Take a look at:
>
> pg_stat_activity:
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/monitoring-stats.html#MONITORING-PG-STAT-ACTIVITY-VIEW
>
> and
>
> pg_locks
>
> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/view-pg-locks.html
>
> to see if there is a process holding that data open.
>
>>
>> Any thoughts on this?
>>
>> Best regards,
>> Manuel
>>
>
>
> --
> Adrian Klaver
> adrian.klaver@aklaver.com
>

--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com