wait event docs
The wait event information in PostgreSQL is very helpful for
troubleshooting. I always reference the PostgreSQL docs first, and when
people ask me about wait events that where I send them first. The list
of wait events there is comprehensive, but the descriptions are a bit
terse and often use vocabulary that requires some familiarity with the
internals to understand.
AWS created some wait event documentation for Aurora with PostgreSQL
compatibility which takes a slightly different approach. It's a lot
more words... but it tries to give useful suggestions about how to
improve (or fix) the system when a particular wait event is encountered.
Something like this would be really valuable for open source PostgreSQL
too. While somebody's personal blog is one solution, it doesn't seem
wholly inappropriate to live on a community resource. I'd be happy to
seed the content and continue making updates it as I regularly helping
people solve problems on open source community PostgreSQL (and hopefully
others contribute too).
Could we create a new wiki page as a starting point, and we could draft
up and maintain something there for a little while? Maybe a place like
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Wait_Events ?
If it does turn out to be useful for a lot of people then maybe it could
even get into the PG docs someday. :)
-Jeremy
P.S. my wiki username is "Jer" https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/User:Jer
--
Jeremy Schneider
Database Engineer
Amazon Web Services
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 02:07:14PM -0800, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
The wait event information in PostgreSQL is very helpful for
troubleshooting. I always reference the PostgreSQL docs first, and when
people ask me about wait events that where I send them first. The list
of wait events there is comprehensive, but the descriptions are a bit
terse and often use vocabulary that requires some familiarity with the
internals to understand.
(I think that it would be better to avoid cross-posting among multiple
lists. Please note that I have removed -www and -general in my reply,
keeping -docs because that7s the most meaningful)
Could we create a new wiki page as a starting point, and we could draft
up and maintain something there for a little while? Maybe a place like
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Wait_Events ?
That sounds like a good idea, as it is true that the docs are rather
sparse about the meaning behind a given wait event showing a lot in
profiles and what it actually means for your application. We have a
couple of links from the docs to the wiki, so it could be an idea to
add a link to the wiki in the docs near the wait event table. more to
the point, this makes me wonder if actually a better place for such
stuff would be a new section dedicated to wait event profiles here:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/monitoring.html
--
Michael
On Fri, Dec 13, 2019 at 03:50:29PM +0900, Michael Paquier wrote:
On Thu, Dec 12, 2019 at 02:07:14PM -0800, Jeremy Schneider wrote:
The wait event information in PostgreSQL is very helpful for
troubleshooting.� I always reference the PostgreSQL docs first, and when
people ask me about wait events that where I send them first.� The list
of wait events there is comprehensive, but the descriptions are a bit
terse and often use vocabulary that requires some familiarity with the
internals to understand.(I think that it would be better to avoid cross-posting among multiple
lists. Please note that I have removed -www and -general in my reply,
keeping -docs because that7s the most meaningful)Could we create a new wiki page as a starting point, and we could draft
up and maintain something there for a little while?� Maybe a place like
https://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Wait_Events ?That sounds like a good idea, as it is true that the docs are rather
sparse about the meaning behind a given wait event showing a lot in
profiles and what it actually means for your application. We have a
couple of links from the docs to the wiki, so it could be an idea to
add a link to the wiki in the docs near the wait event table. more to
the point, this makes me wonder if actually a better place for such
stuff would be a new section dedicated to wait event profiles here:
https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/monitoring.html
Agreed, it probably should be in the official docs.
--
Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com
+ As you are, so once was I. As I am, so you will be. +
+ Ancient Roman grave inscription +