AutoVacuum and growing transaction XID's
Hello Team, We are using a PostgreSQL version -9.6.12 version and from last 4 weeks our Transaction ID's (XID's) have increased by 195 million to 341 million transactions. I see the below from pg_stat_activity from the postGreSQL DB. 1) Viewing the pg_stat-activity I noticed that the vacuum query is running for a runtime interval of few hours to 3-5 days whenever I check the pg_stat-activity. Is this a common process postgreSQL runs ? I have noticed this running and show in the pg_stat activity from last few weeks only. Also the query shows the table name with (to prevent wrap around) for each of the tables in the vacuum query as output. What does this mean ? 2) Does it mean I need to run a manual auto vacuum process for these tables ? as the transaction ids have increased from 195 million to 341 million ?. What other things I need to check in the database around this ?. Thanks !!
Re: AutoVacuum and growing transaction XID's
On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 1:33 PM Michael Lewis wrote: > It is trying to do a vacuum freeze. Do you have autovacuum turned off? Any > settings changed from default related to autovacuum? > > https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/routine-vacuuming.html > Read 24.1.5. Preventing Transaction ID Wraparound Failures > > These may also be of help- > > https://info.crunchydata.com/blog/managing-transaction-id-wraparound-in-postgresql > https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/blog/managing-freezing/ > > Note that you need to ensure the server gets caught up, or you risk being > locked out to prevent data corruption. > Thanks Mike. 1) We haven't changed anything related to autovacuum except a work_mem parameter which was increased to 4 GB which I believe is not related to autovacuum 2) The vacuum was not turned off and few parameters we had on vacuum are *autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor = 0.02* and *autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor = 0.05* *3) *The database curently we are running is 2 years old for now and we have around close to 40 partitions and the datfrozenxid on the table is 343 million whereas the default is 200 million. I would try doing a manual auto vacuum on those tables where the autovacuum_freeze_max_age > 200 million. Do you think It's a right thing to do ?. I will also go through this documents. Tahnks
Re: AutoVacuum and growing transaction XID's
On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 4:18 PM github kran wrote: > > > On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 1:33 PM Michael Lewis wrote: > >> It is trying to do a vacuum freeze. Do you have autovacuum turned off? >> Any settings changed from default related to autovacuum? >> >> https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.6/routine-vacuuming.html >> Read 24.1.5. Preventing Transaction ID Wraparound Failures >> >> These may also be of help- >> >> https://info.crunchydata.com/blog/managing-transaction-id-wraparound-in-postgresql >> https://www.2ndquadrant.com/en/blog/managing-freezing/ >> >> Note that you need to ensure the server gets caught up, or you risk being >> locked out to prevent data corruption. >> > > Thanks Mike. > 1) We haven't changed anything related to autovacuum except a work_mem > parameter which was increased to 4 GB which I believe is not related to > autovacuum > 2) The vacuum was not turned off and few parameters we had on vacuum are > *autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor = 0.02* and > *autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor > = 0.05* > *3) *The database curently we are running is 2 years old for now and we > have around close to 40 partitions and the *datfrozenxid on the table is > 343 million whereas the default is 200 million*. I would try doing a > manual auto vacuum on those tables > where the *autovacuum_freeze_max_age > 200 million*. Do you think It's a > right thing to do ?. > > I will also go through this documents. > * Few more things 5/7 - 8:40 PM CDT* 1) I see there are *8 Vacuum workers* ( Not sure what changed) running in the background and the concern I have is all of these vacuum processes are running with wrap around and while they are running I can't either DROP or ALTER any other tables ( REMOVE Inheritance for any of old tables where the WRITES are not getting written to).* Any of the ALTER TABLE OR DROP TABLE DDL's arer not getting exeucted even I WAITED FOR SEVERAL MINUTES , so I have terminated those queries as I didn't have luck.* 2) T*he VACUUM Process wrap around is running for last 1 day and several hrs on other tables. * 3) *Can I increase the autovacuum_freeze_max_age on the tables on production system* ? > > Thanks > > >
Re: AutoVacuum and growing transaction XID's
Thanks David for your replies. On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 11:01 PM David Rowley wrote: > On Fri, 8 May 2020 at 09:18, github kran wrote: > > 1) We haven't changed anything related to autovacuum except a work_mem > parameter which was increased to 4 GB which I believe is not related to > autovacuum > > It might want to look into increasing vacuum_cost_limit to something > well above 200 or dropping autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay down from 20 > to something much lower. However, you say you've not changed the > autovacuum settings, but you've also said: > > >1) I see there are 8 Vacuum workers ( Not sure what changed) running > in the background and the concern I have is all of these vacuum processes > are running with wrap around and while they are running > - Yes I said it was originally 3 but I noticed the work_mem parameter was changed few weeks back to 4 GB and then from that day onwards there is an increasing trend of the MaxUsedTransactionIds from 200 Million to 347 million ( It's growing day by day from last 2 -3 weeks) - Do you think there could be a formula on how the workers could have increased based on this increase in WORK_MEM controlled by database ?. > The default is 3, so if you have 8 then the settings are non-standard. > > It might be good to supply the output of: > > SELECT name,setting from pg_Settings where name like '%vacuum%'; > Output of vacuum name setting min_val max_val boot_val reset_val autovacuum on null null on on autovacuum_analyze_scale_factor 0.02 0 100 0.1 0.02 autovacuum_analyze_threshold 50 0 2147483647 50 50 autovacuum_freeze_max_age 2 10 20 2 2 autovacuum_max_workers 8 1 262143 3 8 autovacuum_multixact_freeze_max_age 4 1 20 4 4 autovacuum_naptime 5 1 2147483 60 5 autovacuum_vacuum_cost_delay 5 -1 100 20 5 autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit -1 -1 1 -1 -1 autovacuum_vacuum_scale_factor 0.05 0 100 0.2 0.05 autovacuum_vacuum_threshold 50 0 2147483647 50 50 autovacuum_work_mem -1 -1 2147483647 -1 -1 > > You should know that the default speed that autovacuum runs at is > quite slow in 9.6. If you end up with all your autovacuum workers tied > up with anti-wraparound vacuums then other tables are likely to get > neglected and that could lead to stale stats or bloated tables. Best > to aim to get auto-vacuum running faster or aim to perform some manual > vacuums of tables that are over their max freeze age during an > off-peak period to make use of the lower load during those times. > Start with tables in pg_class with the largest age(relfrozenxid). > You'll still likely want to look at the speed autovacuum runs at > either way. > > Please be aware that the first time a new cluster crosses the > autovacuum_freeze_max_age threshold can be a bit of a pain point as it > can mean that many tables require auto-vacuum activity all at once. > The impact of this is compounded if you have many tables that never > receive an UPDATE/DELETE as auto-vacuum, in 9.6, does not visit those > tables for any other reason. After the first time, the relfrozenxids > of tables tend to be more staggered so their vacuum freeze > requirements are also more staggered and that tends to cause fewer > problems. > The current situation I have is the auto vacuum kicked with 8 tables with each of those tied to each worker and it's running very slow in 9.6 as you mentioned i observed VACUUM on those 8 tables is running from last 15 hrs and other process are running for 1 hr+ and others for few minutes for different tables. Finally I would wait for your reply to see what could be done for this VACUUM and growing TXIDs values. -Do you think I should consider changing back the work_mem back to 4 MB what it was originally ? - Can I apply your recommendations on a production instance directly or you prefer me to apply initially in other environment before applying on Prod ? - Also like I said I want to clean up few unused tables OR MANUAL VACUUM but current system doesn't allow me to do it considering these factors. - I will try to run VACUUM Manually during off peak hrs , Can I STOP the Manual VACUUM process if its take more than 10 minutes or what is the allowed time in mins I can have it running ?. David >
Re: AutoVacuum and growing transaction XID's
On Thu, May 7, 2020 at 11:04 PM David Rowley wrote: > On Fri, 8 May 2020 at 13:51, github kran wrote: > > I can't either DROP or ALTER any other tables ( REMOVE Inheritance > for any of old tables where the WRITES are not getting written to). Any of > the ALTER TABLE OR DROP TABLE DDL's arer not getting exeucted even I > WAITED FOR SEVERAL MINUTES , so I have terminated those queries as I didn't > have luck. > > The auto-vacuum freeze holds an SharedUpdateExclusiveLock on the table > being vacuumed. If you try any DDL that requires an > AccessExclusiveLock, it'll have to wait until the vacuum has > completed. If you leave the DDL running then all accesses to the table > will be queued behind the ungranted AccessExclusiveLock. It's likely > a good idea to always run DDL with a fairly short lock_timeout, just > in case this happens. > * How much value I can assign to lock_timeout so that I dont get into trouble to test my DDL commands and without impacting other sessions.* > > >3) Can I increase the autovacuum_freeze_max_age on the tables on > production system ? > > > Yes, but you cannot increase the per-table setting above the global > setting. Changing the global setting requires a restart. > >How can I change the value of the global setting of the autovacuum_freeze_max_Age value. > David >
Re: AutoVacuum and growing transaction XID's
Thanks for yous suggestions Michael and David. On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 4:11 PM Michael Lewis wrote: > autovacuum_naptime being only 5 seconds seems too frequent. A lock_timeout > might be 1-5 seconds depending on your system. Usually, DDL can fail and > wait a little time rather than lock the table for minutes and have all > reads back up behind the DDL. > > Given you have autovacuum_vacuum_cost_limit set to unlimited (seems very > odd), I'm not sure a manual vacuum freeze command on the tables with high > age would perform differently. Still, issuing a vacuum freeze and then > killing the autovacuum process might be worth trying. >
