> Dirk Lutzebaeck <lutzeb@aeccom.com> writes:
> > ok, here is what I have found out on 6.5.3, Linux 2.2.10:
> > [ make table with a bunch of almost-5K varchar fields ]
> > # vacuumdb --analyze test
> > ERROR: Tuple is too big: size 9604
> > vacuumdb: database vacuum failed on test.
>
> Ohhh ... I know what's going on. The oversize tuple is the one that
> VACUUM is attempting to store in pg_statistic, containing the min and
> max values for your varchar column. In this example, both the min and
> max are just shy of 5K characters, so the pg_statistic tuple is too
> big to fit on a page.
>
> I had already patched this in current sources, by the expedient of not
> trying to store a pg_statistic tuple at all if it's too big. (Then
> you don't get stats for that particular column, but the stats probably
> wouldn't be useful anyway.)
>
> I suppose I should make up a back-patch for REL6_5 with this fix.
Oh, good we know the cause. Seems we should wait for 7.0 for this.
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