Pg_autovacuum script.

Since I could not locate anything similar on the net, I have written a script to automatically start and stop the autovacuum daemon. This should be added to the existing postgresql script.

Please let me know if you can see any shortcomings. I have taken into consideration that more than one postmaster may be running on the same machine, so I have stored the pg_autovacuum pid into a file, which is referenced when bringing down the postmaster instance. I have not gone to the effort of including all the pg_autovacuum parameters, you can add them at will.

One issue I can foresee is maintainability, where you will have to update the postgresql script file with the snippets below, every postgres upgrade.

Here are the snippets :

This goes where all the other init scripts are located.
# Initialize pg_autovacuum defaults. Theo Galanakis 11/04/2005
PGAUTO_LOGFILE=/var/lib/pg_autovacuum.log
PGAUTO_SLEEP=60

Added to the end of the Start function.
 # Start pg_autovacuum. Theo Galanakis 11/05/2005
        PAUTO_START=$"Starting pg_autovacuum service: "
        echo -n "$PAUTO_START"
        pg_autovacuum -D -s ${PGAUTO_SLEEP} -p ${PGPORT} -U postgres -L ${PGAUTO_LOGFILE}
        pg_autovacuum_pid=`pidof -s $PGENGINE/pg_autovacuum`
        if [ $pg_autovacuum_pid ]
        then
           success "$PAUTO_START"
           echo $pg_autovacuum_pid > /var/run/pg_autovacuum.${PGPORT}.pid
           echo
        else
           failure "$PAUTO_START"
           echo
        fi

Added to the end of the Stop function.
# Stop pg_autovaccum. Theo Galanakis 11/04/2005
        echo -n $"Stopping pg_autovacuum service: "
        pg_autovacuum_pid=`head -n 1 /var/run/pg_autovacuum.${PGPORT}.pid`
        kill -TERM $pg_autovacuum_pid
        ret=`ps --no-heading ${pg_autovacuum_pid}`
        if [ -z "$ret" ]
        then
                echo_success
        else
                echo_failure
        fi
        echo
        rm -f /var/run/pg_autovacuum.${PGPORT}.pid