"Bryan Murphy" <bryan.murphy@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > When we run pg_dump on our database, our web site becomes completely > unresponsive. ... > Does pg_dump create table locks? It doesn't look like an I/O problem > as far as I can tell... Only access-share locks, but that could still be an issue if anything in your system likes to take exclusive locks. Have you looked into pg_locks to see if anything's getting blocked? pg_dump is entirely capable of causing an unpleasant amount of I/O load, but that shouldn't result in "complete unresponsiveness", and anyway your iostat output doesn't look like you're saturated... regards, tom lane ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 4: Have you searched our list archives? http://archives.postgresql.org/