On Mon, 2004-02-16 at 13:03, Tom Lane wrote:
> Rod Taylor <pg@rbt.ca> writes:
> > The real question is why does DROP INDEX take more than a couple of
> > seconds to complete? It is not held up by locked.
>
> AFAICS it shouldn't take any time to complete. I think you're mistaken
> and it is blocking on a lock (it will want exclusive lock on the table).
> Everyone else will then queue up behind it.
I not convinced it is waiting on a lock. The queries on that table are
very short (couple of milliseconds) -- but there are a ton of them. All
backends appear to be idle (pg_stat_activity with command shown) when we
start the drop and shortly after huge backups occur.