Russell Smith <mr-russ@pws.com.au> writes:
> Given vacuum must then touch every page, is there a win in only setting
> hint bits on pages where vacuum has to do some other work on the page?
> As vacuum is causing significant IO load for data that may not be
> accessed for some time.
Well, if vacuum doesn't do it then some other poor sod will have to.
My feeling is that vacuum's purpose in life is to offload maintenance
cycles from foreground queries, so we should be happy to have it setting
all the hint bits. If Kevin doesn't like the resultant I/O load then he
should use the vacuum_cost_delay parameters to dial down vacuum speed.
regards, tom lane