Forgot to mention: I'm using 9.0.3
> Usually a manual vacuum cancels a running autovacuum task.
Not in my case - however, the autovac does seem to be in a waiting state.
> You should find a notice about the cancelation in th logfile.
>
> > current_query | vacuum analyze
> > age | 11:46:57.245568
>
> Where is the age column from?
> It's not in pg_stat_activity.
age(now(), query_start)
>> Is one of the two processes waiting=t in pg_stat_activity?
ah, there it is. Yes, the autovac is waiting.
>> > I'm trying to vacuum the table as quickly as possible so a manual
>> > vacuum seems to be in order as my understanding (and experience)
>> > is that the autovac is a hell of a lot slower to mitigate impact
>> > on general performance.
>>
>> Tune the autovacuum settings, especially the scale factors of the
>> tables in question and the cost limit.
>> Is autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit != -1 ?
>> This could be one reason, why manual vacuum is faster.
autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit is on default (-1).
