Re: Rapid disk usage spikes when updating large tables with GIN indexes - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Tom Lane
Subject Re: Rapid disk usage spikes when updating large tables with GIN indexes
Date
Msg-id 31807.1526324895@sss.pgh.pa.us
Whole thread Raw
In response to Rapid disk usage spikes when updating large tables with GIN indexes  (Jonathan Marks <jonathanaverymarks@gmail.com>)
Responses Re: Rapid disk usage spikes when updating large tables with GINindexes  (Jonathan Marks <jonathanaverymarks@gmail.com>)
List pgsql-general
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Jonathan Marks <jonathanaverymarks@gmail.com> writes:
> Thanks for your quick reply. Here’s a bit more information:
> 1) to measure the “size of the database” we run something like `select datname,
pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size(datname))from pg_database;` I’m not sure if this includes WAL size. 
> 2) I’ve tried measuring WAL size with `select sum(size) from pg_ls_waldir();` — this also doesn’t budge.
> 3) Our current checkpoint_timeout is 600s with a checkpoint_completion_target of 0.9 — what does that suggest?

Hmph.  Your WAL-size query seems on point, and that pretty much destroys
my idea about a WAL emission spike.

pg_database_size() should include all regular and temporary tables/indexes
in the named DB.  It doesn't include WAL (but we've eliminated that), nor
cluster-wide tables such as pg_database (but those seem pretty unlikely
to be at issue), nor non-relation temporary files such as sort/hash temp
space.  At this point I think we have to focus our attention on what might
be creating large temp files.  I do not see anything in the GIN index code
that could do that, especially not if you have fastupdate off.  I wonder
whether there is something about the particular bulk-insertion queries
you're using that could result in large temp files --- which'd make the
apparent correlation with GIN index use a mirage, but we're running out
of other ideas.  You could try enabling log_temp_files to see if there's
anything to that.

In the grasping-at-straws department: are you quite sure that the extra
disk space consumption is PG's to begin with, rather than something
outside the database entirely?

            regards, tom lane


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