Something goes wrong that this query plan thinks there is only gonna be 1 row from (SELECT uid FROM alog ... ) so chooses such query plan, and thus it runs forever (at least so long that I didn't bother to wait, like 10 minutes): miernik=> EXPLAIN UPDATE cnts SET p0 = FALSE WHERE uid IN (SELECT uid FROM alog WHERE pid = 3452654 AND o = 1); QUERY PLAN ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nested Loop IN Join (cost=0.00..3317.34 rows=1 width=44) -> Seq Scan on cnts (cost=0.00..36.00 rows=2000 width=44) -> Index Scan using alog_uid_idx on alog (cost=0.00..296.95 rows=1 width=4) Index Cond: ((alog.uid)::integer = (cnts.uid)::integer) Filter: ((alog.pid = 3452654::numeric) AND (alog.o = 1::numeric)) (5 rows) But if I give him only the inner part, it makes reasonable assumptions and runs OK: miernik=> EXPLAIN SELECT uid FROM alog WHERE pid = 3452654 AND o = 1; QUERY PLAN ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bitmap Heap Scan on alog (cost=100.21..9559.64 rows=3457 width=4) Recheck Cond: ((pid = 3452654::numeric) AND (o = 1::numeric)) -> Bitmap Index Scan on alog_pid_o_idx (cost=0.00..99.35 rows=3457 width=0) Index Cond: ((pid = 3452654::numeric) AND (o = 1::numeric)) (4 rows) Can't show you EXPLAIN ANALYZE for the first one, as it also runds forver. For the second one, its consistent with the EXPLAIN. Before it was running OK, but I recently disabled autovacuum and now run VACUUM manually serveal times a day, and run ANALYZE manually on alog and cnts tables before runnign the above. How may I fix this to work? shared_buffers = 5MB work_mem = 1MB Machine is a 48 MB RAM Xen. But not the disabling autovacuum broke it, but running ANALYZE manually on the tables broke it, and I don't know why, I thougt ANALYZE would improve the guesses? -- Miernik http://miernik.name/