On Fri, 2005-12-09 at 14:29 +0100, Baldur Norddahl wrote: > I noticed that sometimes we seem to have a problem with simple queries > that take a long time to execute. For example "select * from config > where key='abc'" which normally only takes a few milliseconds, but in > some rare cases suddenly takes 10-30 seconds. > > It is a production system, so there are always other queries going on. > But the server is not neccessarly loaded when this happens. I can't > think of any reasons that there should be a lock on the tables in question. You'll find response times spike somewhat during Checkpoints. We've been working to reduce this effect for some time and there is still more work to be done. Tune your wal settings and bgwriter to improve things, plus upgrade to 8.1 which has made leaps forward with this issue. Best Regards, Simon Riggs