We have an issue with running pg_dump while a database is under
reasonably heavy update load. This is 7.4.5 on Solaris 9/intel.

The observed behavior was that a pg_dump running with nothing else going
on takes a couple of minutes, but when we are running some system tests
that do heavy updates to a selection of application tables, it appears
that pg_dump blocks until the update run is done. This didn't make sense
because everything I can find about pg_dump indicates that it should
only be taking read locks, so I don't see why it should be blocked.

We looked at pg_locks, and saw that the pg_dump process was acquiring
locks like:

14764 | ExclusiveLock | 124576072 | COPY public.stats (id,
description, lastsavedate, lastsaveuser) TO stdout;

(we are using pg_dump with -Fc) If COPY is taking a ROW EXCLUSIVE lock,
then that would explain why we are seeing contention, but I don't
understand why COPY is locking at that level. Is there a better way to
run pg_dump against a database with a lot of update activity?

Thanks.

- DAP
================================================== ====
David Parker Tazz Networks

"David Parker" <dparker@tazznetworks.com> writes:
> The observed behavior was that a pg_dump running with nothing else going
> on takes a couple of minutes, but when we are running some system tests
> that do heavy updates to a selection of application tables, it appears
> that pg_dump blocks until the update run is done.

Are you sure the other processes aren't taking any exclusive locks?
Are you sure your system isn't saturated to the point where pg_dump
just can't make progress very fast?

> We looked at pg_locks, and saw that the pg_dump process was acquiring
> locks like:
>
> 14764 | ExclusiveLock | 124576072 | COPY public.stats (id,
> description, lastsavedate, lastsaveuser) TO stdout;

It's impossible to tell what you are actually looking at here --- that's
not the raw output of pg_locks, and you've conveniently omitted any
column headers --- but I wonder whether that isn't just the
transaction's standard lock on its own XID.

If pg_dump is actually getting blocked, that will show as a row with
granted = false and pg_dump's PID.

regards, tom lane

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