Huge increase of database partition - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Thomas SIMON
Subject Huge increase of database partition
Date
Msg-id 52692CCC.8080305@neteven.com
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: Huge increase of database partition  ("Plugge, Joe R." <JRPlugge@west.com>)
List pgsql-admin
Hi the list,

Yesterday, i have had a big problem of disk space on my server, running postgresql 9.0.13; with streaming replication.

Between 6pm and 7-30pm, i went from 45% used space to 99% (100% ?) used space on my /data partition (who contains my postgresql/9.0/main/base ; but does not contains the WAL; they are deported on an other partition). - seen only after with munin -

Juste after that - still according to munin- , the partition suddently decreases to its normal value (around 45%)
This peak represents around 165 Go of data ! ; beacause my partition size is 315 Go.

I can't explain why, it's the first time i have something like this. Usually, the size of the partition is very stable ; and grows very slowly.
Still with munin, i see that in this period, the blocks read per second increases from around 20k to 80k,  and i see that the disk utilisation is around 100%, which confirms that postgres wrote a lot of data.

I don't understand how this can happen, have you ever seen things like this ?

Thanks in advance,
Thomas

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