Runbook category
Vacuum & bloat
Open this category when the table grows without the row count growing, when autovacuum is "running" and nothing reclaims, or when wraparound age starts showing up in monitoring. MVCC leaves dead row versions behind; vacuum is what clears them. If the symptom is space, dead tuples, or an age counter, you are in the right place.
The failure surface is wider than one VACUUM command. Autovacuum thresholds that are fine for a cold table and absurd for a hot one. A long transaction that holds back cleanup for everyone. TOAST and index bloat the main heap size never shows. Tables autovacuum keeps skipping. Multixact wraparound next to plain XID wraparound. And the choice between plain VACUUM, VACUUM FULL, and REINDEX CONCURRENTLY when you finally need the space back.
Observability is how you watch vacuum and analyse progress while they run. Locking & concurrency is often the reason vacuum cannot finish, idle-in-transaction and long readers pin the horizon. WAL & replication shows up when hot_standby_feedback or an abandoned slot keeps dead rows alive for a replica. This category is the cleanup path once you know the heap is the problem.
- Pro
Reclaim table bloat: plain VACUUM vs VACUUM FULL
The table file is far bigger than the live data and VACUUM does not shrink it.
- Pro
Rebuild a bloated index with REINDEX CONCURRENTLY
The index is four times the size of its entries and scans keep getting slower.
- Pro
Tame autovacuum on a high-churn table
A hot table reaches six figures of dead rows before autovacuum even considers it.
- Pro
Unblock vacuum held back by a long transaction
VACUUM runs, reports rows not yet removable, and the bloat never goes down.
- Pro
Preempt transaction ID wraparound
Transaction age climbs toward two billion and nothing is freezing the old rows.
- Pro
Find tables autovacuum keeps skipping
One table bloats forever, autovacuum never touches it, and nothing warns you.
- Pro
Shrink TOAST bloat from wide rows
Heap size looks healthy; the disk filled because the TOAST table grew five-fold.
- Pro
Assess multixact wraparound risk
A second wraparound counter nobody monitors until the cluster stops accepting writes.
- Pro
ANALYZE the partitioned parent autovacuum never will
Plans across a partitioned table get worse for months while every partition looks healthy.
- Pro
Measure freeze debt before autovacuum forces your hand
age(relfrozenxid) keeps climbing and the vacuums that run never bring it down.