OK, looks like the time window is exactly when we run vacuum. That has been running now for a couple of months no problem, but the last 2 weekends we've been doing massive data loads which could be complicating things. Is vacuum a good candidate for what could be locking up the tables? Here is the script that is running : ---snip--- #Initialize the variables yesterday=`date -d "yesterday" +%Y-%m-%d` for db in `psql -t -A -d template1 -c "select datname from pg_database"`; do /opt/PostgreSQL/8.3/bin/vacuumdb --analyze --full $db ; done #Mail wal backup log to admin group mail -s " Vacuum log on pgprd01 " admin@xxxxxxxxxxx < /home/postgres/vacuum/vacuum.log #Move the wal_log_backup.log to the yesterday folder mkdir /home/postgres/vacuum/$yesterday/ mv /home/postgres/vacuum/vacuum.log /home/postgres/vacuum/$yesterday/$yesterday_vacuum.log -- “Don't eat anything you've ever seen advertised on TV” - Michael Pollan, author of "In Defense of Food" -- Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general