> Now, the problem is that I cannot turn autovacuum off! I have tried to set > autovacuum = off at postgresql.conf with no avail. I have also tried to > disable the vacuum by inserting rows to pg_autovacuum but still the vacuum > processes just pop up. What's even more weird is that autovacuum is > vacuuming the same tables over and over. No sign of xid wraparound issues > show in the logs. How can I stop autovacuum without restarting the database > instance?
If your database is in danger of Xid wraparound, autovacuum will run on it no matter what you do. Check pg_class.relfrozenxid and pg_database.datfrozenxid, and the current Xid counter (from pg_controldata I think). Also take a look at the description of the autovacuum_min_freeze_age param (or was it max_freeze_age? I forget).
I think I may have found the problem, the import uses a temporary table which I guess autovacuum can not handle? Manually vacuuming it changed the relfrozenxids of other tables dramatically.
