We've got over 250GB of files in a pgsql_tmp directory, some with modification timestamps going back to August 2010 when the server was last restarted. select pg_postmaster_start_time(); pg_postmaster_start_time ------------------------------- 2010-08-08 22:53:31.999804-04 (1 row) I'm not sure why the temp files aren't being cleaned up. I can confirm we haven't had a backend crash in at least a week (from inspection of the log files). The oldest backend goes back to the end of October: production=# select current_timestamp, min(backend_start) from pg_stat_activity; now | min -------------------------------+------------------------------- 2010-11-08 15:23:25.331311-05 | 2010-10-27 05:51:02.707688-04 (1 row) To confirm which files are no longer being used, I've come up with the following query (where 16384 is the tablespace in question): SELECT filename, pid, (pg_stat_file(dir || '/' || filename)).modification AS modified_at FROM (SELECT CAST('pg_tblspc/16384/pgsql_tmp' AS TEXT) as dir, filename, CAST(regexp_replace(filename, $r$^pgsql_tmp(\d+)\..*$$r$, $rr$\1$rr$, 'g') AS INT) as pid FROM pg_ls_dir('pg_tblspc/16384/pgsql_tmp') AS the (filename)) AS temp_files (dir, filename, pid) LEFT JOIN pg_stat_activity ON procpid = pid WHERE procpid IS NULL ORDER BY modified_at; filename | pid | modified_at -------------------+-------+------------------------ pgsql_tmp29522.1 | 29522 | 2010-08-09 00:26:42-04 pgsql_tmp31962.0 | 31962 | 2010-08-09 00:45:41-04 pgsql_tmp29258.0 | 29258 | 2010-08-09 00:46:01-04 pgsql_tmp1478.0 | 1478 | 2010-08-09 00:46:16-04 pgsql_tmp1482.2 | 1482 | 2010-08-09 00:46:18-04 pgsql_tmp29267.1 | 29267 | 2010-08-09 01:02:34-04 ... pgsql_tmp21928.0 | 21928 | 2010-11-08 00:32:48-05 pgsql_tmp20825.0 | 20825 | 2010-11-08 02:17:51-05 pgsql_tmp878.0 | 878 | 2010-11-08 02:25:23-05 pgsql_tmp8064.0 | 8064 | 2010-11-08 03:47:26-05 pgsql_tmp31645.0 | 31645 | 2010-11-08 07:09:40-05 pgsql_tmp25245.0 | 25245 | 2010-11-08 09:33:24-05 pgsql_tmp2302.3 | 2302 | 2010-11-08 09:59:45-05 pgsql_tmp17961.0 | 17961 | 2010-11-08 11:29:12-05 (2685 rows) Does this query look reasonable? What other things should I take into account before I start deleting files from the file system? Why might these files not be cleaned up on their own? Cheers, Michael Glaesemann michael.glaesemann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general