Hi all;
I am trying to track down a problem we are seeing that looks very similar to bug #12050, and would certainly consider trying to contribute a fix if we agree on one. (I am not sure we can, so absent that, the next question is whether it makes sense to create a utility to fix the problem when it comes up so that a dump/restore is not needed).
The system:
PostgreSQL 9.6.3
Gentoo Linux.
Problem:
The system this came up on is PostgreSQL 9.6.3 and has had repeated trouble with disk space. Querying pg_database_size, as well as du on the subdirectory of base/ show total usage to be around 3.8TB. Summing up the size of the relations in pg_class though shows around 2.1TB.
Initial troubleshooting found around 150 GB of space in pg_temp which had never been cleared and was at least several days old. Restarting the server cleared these up.
Poking around the base/[oid] directory, I found a large number of files which did not correspond with a pg_class entry. One of the apparent relations was nearly 1TB in size.
What I think happened:
I think various pg_temp/* and orphaned relation files (In base/[oid]) were created when PostgreSQL crashed due to running out of space in various operations including creating materialised views.
So my question is if there is a way we can safely clean these up on server restart? If not does it make sense to try to create a utility that can connect to PostgreSQL, seek out valid files, and delete the rest?
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Best Regards,
Chris Travers
Database Administrator
Saarbrücker Straße 37a, 10405 Berlin
