TOAST tables keeps growing! - Mailing list pgsql-admin

From Thomas Madsen
Subject TOAST tables keeps growing!
Date
Msg-id 64F70386AE9AB64D8F36DD6FC355555E570F32@hal9000.softcom.local
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: TOAST tables keeps growing!  (Stephan Szabo <sszabo@megazone.bigpanda.com>)
Re: TOAST tables keeps growing!  (Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>)
List pgsql-admin
Hi.
 
I'm running a production server with PostgreSQL version 7.2.1, that does email scans.
That means up to tens of thousands of entries in the database (log and quarantine) each day, and an equal amount removed every night.
 
The problem is that TOAST tables keeps springing forth and consume disk space.
We do a VACUUM every night, but it does not reduce or stop the TOAST table growth.
 
I searched the mailing list for answers to this problem, but found only other people describing the same problem.
Namely, that their max_fsm_pages were too low and that postgresql now has lost track of the surplus TOAST data pages.
 
In our postgresql.conf we ourselves had the default value of 10000 for max_fsm_pages, which I have now raised to around a million.
I restarted psql and did a vacuum to see if that would reduce the disk usage, but no change was seen.
 
So the question(s) is:
    What can I do to reclaim the wasted TOAST diskspace?
    Can I find and eliminate the lost TOAST tuples somehow?
 
 
Thanks!
 
Best regards,
Thomas M. Madsen.
 
 
 

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