On Nov 8, 2010, at 16:03 , Tom Lane wrote: > Michael Glaesemann <michael.glaesemann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: >> 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. > > That's very peculiar. Do you keep query logs? It would be useful to > try to correlate the temp files' PIDs and timestamps with the specific > queries that must have created them. We don't log all of them, but I checked those we did. It looks like it's happening when queries are timing out. I'm seeing this pattern pretty consistently: temporary file + query canceling statement due to statement timeout second temp file Here's a sample: pid | 877 sess_id | 4ccf7257.36d sess_line | 16 filename | pgsql_tmp877.0 accessed_at | 2010-09-15 12:14:45-04 modified_at | 2010-11-01 22:37:00-04 logged_at | 2010-11-01 22:37:01.412-04 error | LOG sql_state | 00000 message | temporary file: path "pg_tblspc/16384/pgsql_tmp/pgsql_tmp877.0", size 87184416 pid | 877 sess_id | 4ccf7257.36d sess_line | 17 filename | pgsql_tmp877.0 accessed_at | 2010-09-15 12:14:45-04 modified_at | 2010-11-01 22:37:00-04 logged_at | 2010-11-01 22:37:01.412-04 error | ERROR sql_state | 57014 message | canceling statement due to statement timeout pid | 877 sess_id | 4ccf7257.36d sess_line | 18 filename | pgsql_tmp877.0 accessed_at | 2010-09-15 12:14:45-04 modified_at | 2010-11-01 22:37:00-04 logged_at | 2010-11-01 22:37:01.434-04 error | LOG sql_state | 00000 message | temporary file: path "pg_tblspc/16384/pgsql_tmp/pgsql_tmp877.1", size 5480448 query | It looks like the pgsql_tmp877.1 file is cleaned up as it doesn't appear in the pgsql_tmp directory. > Personally, I'd not risk trying to match on PID; it should be sufficient > to delete anything with a timestamp older than the oldest active > backend. (Unless you've got some really long-lived sessions in > there...) That's easily-enough determined from pg_stat_activity. > What PG version is this? select version(); version ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- PostgreSQL 8.4.4 on x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu, compiled by GCC gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 20080704 (Red Hat 4.1.2-48), 64-bit (1 row) 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