How can I tell if PostgreSQL's Autovacuum is running on UNIX?

Question

How can one tell if the autovacuum daemon in Postgres 9.x is running and maintaining the database cluster?

Answer 1

I'm using:

select count(*) from pg_stat_activity where query like 'autovacuum:%';

in collectd to know how many autovacuum are running concurrently.

You may need to create a security function like this:

CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION public.pg_autovacuum_count() RETURNS bigint
AS 'select count(*) from pg_stat_activity where query like ''autovacuum:%'';'
LANGUAGE SQL
STABLE
SECURITY DEFINER;

and call that from collectd.

In earlier Postgres, "query" was "current_query" so change it according to what works.