From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Wed Jul 25 19:13:38 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BA7F416A41A for ; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:13:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from mail.potentialtech.com (internet.potentialtech.com [66.167.251.6]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 850A413C45B for ; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:13:38 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from wmoran@potentialtech.com) Received: from vanquish.pitbpa0.priv.collaborativefusion.com (pr40.pitbpa0.pub.collaborativefusion.com [206.210.89.202]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by mail.potentialtech.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 862DDEBC78; Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:13:37 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:13:36 -0400 From: Bill Moran To: "Pat Maddox" Message-Id: <20070725151336.dab4f1fa.wmoran@potentialtech.com> In-Reply-To: <810a540e0707251052j6a1b2ac2jb61dd8af4efa083d@mail.gmail.com> References: <810a540e0707251052j6a1b2ac2jb61dd8af4efa083d@mail.gmail.com> X-Mailer: Sylpheed 2.3.1 (GTK+ 2.10.11; i386-portbld-freebsd6.1) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Having bad performance issues X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Wed, 25 Jul 2007 19:13:38 -0000 In response to "Pat Maddox" : > I'm having some bad perf issues on a 6.2 server running PostgreSQL > 8.2.4. I really don't know too much about this stuff...but it doesn't > seem to be related to memory or CPU as they're barely being touched. > Which leaves IO. Here's some vmstat output. My only guess is that the > numbers under the faults section are pretty high. But I don't really > know what that means. I'd appreciate any help. > > Here's the formatted vmstat output: http://pastie.caboo.se/82165 You might get better results asking this on the PostgreSQL performance mailing lists, unless you can determine that it's definitely a FreeBSD problem. If you feel strongly that the problem is FreeBSD-related, I'd suggest you provide hardware details, such the type of disks and the controller. If you feel strongly that the problem is with PostgreSQL, I would post to the performance list at postgresql.org and include your disk types, RAM sizes and your postgresql.conf Taking a guess, based on your symptoms, I would expect you don't have PostgreSQL tuned effectively. If there's a lot of IO, but memory isn't being used, then the memory is being wasted. Start with shared_buffers, and see if bumping that up helps (start with 1/3 of available RAM). -- Bill Moran http://www.potentialtech.com