Thread: Determine unused / not referenced large Objects

Hello list,

we have a database with several tables containing blobs (as oid), that reference large objects in pg_largeobject.

It is my understanding, that the large objects will not be deleted if a row containing the oid is deleted – you have to do that yourself in application logic. (please correct me if wrong)

I think we might not have done that consistently in the past.

Is it safe to assume that pg_largeobject only contains large objects added by application code, or might there be any postgresql-internal objects?

Providing that all BLOB colums are of type oid, I was thinking of getting the fields with

select table_name,column_name from information_schema.columns where data_type = 'oid' and table_name not like 'pg_%' and table_name not like '_pg%';

to create a

select comum1 from table1 UNION select column2 from table2…

and comparing the output with

select distinct loid from pg_largeobject

and subsequently deleting the abandoned ones.

Though we do have backups of course I’m afraid I might be missing something…

regards

Tobias