Yeah I did wait long enough for the vacuum to finish. I did consider the prepared_transactions issue but I don't think we are using those. I'll look down that path though since I could be wrong about that. On a related note I thought in 8.4 a successive vacuum would not take as long as the prior since it "knows where it left off". It doesn't seem to be working like that when running vacuum in a standalone instance; it takes just as long each time, 3-4 hours. thanks for all your help, Gene On Jun 27, 2010, at 10:30 AM, Tom Lane wrote: > Bill Moran <wmoran@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> In response to Gene Hart <genekhart@xxxxxxxxx>: >>> PostgreSQL stand-alone backend 8.4.4 >>> backend> vacuum >>> backend> ^D^D >>> exit > >> Am I reading this wrong or did you not bother to allow the vacuum to finish? >> Considering there's no command terminator (;) on the vacuum command, it's >> unlikely that it ever actually started to do anything. > > No, Gene did it right --- standalone backends have a different command-line > syntax. (I assume also that he observed a suitably long delay before > the second backend> prompt came up...) > > I think Scott's idea of ancient prepared transactions is probably the > most likely bet. Roll those back and then vacuum and you'll be OK. > > regards, tom lane -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general