Since upgrading to PG 10 a few weeks ago I've been experimenting with hash indexes. One thing I've noticed is that they seem to take a _lot_ longer to create than btree indexes, particularly on large tables.
I've got a moderately sized table of about 38M rows and the create index using hash for an integer column (with about 300 unique values) has been running for 12 hours now and still hasn't finished. I have not successfully installed a hash index on a larger table (of which I have many) yet because the create index never seems to finish.
The create index thread will consume an entire CPU while doing this. It does not seem to be I/O bound. It just crunches away burning cpu cycles with no apparent end.
Is expected?
