Ubuntu Manpage: REINDEX - rebuild indexes

Provided by: postgresql-client-16_16.6-0ubuntu0.24.10.1_amd64

NAME

       REINDEX - rebuild indexes

SYNOPSIS

       REINDEX [ ( option [, ...] ) ] { INDEX | TABLE | SCHEMA } [ CONCURRENTLY ] name
       REINDEX [ ( option [, ...] ) ] { DATABASE | SYSTEM } [ CONCURRENTLY ] [ name ]

       where option can be one of:

           CONCURRENTLY [ boolean ]
           TABLESPACE new_tablespace
           VERBOSE [ boolean ]

DESCRIPTION

       REINDEX rebuilds an index using the data stored in the index's table, replacing the old
       copy of the index. There are several scenarios in which to use REINDEX:

       •   An index has become corrupted, and no longer contains valid data. Although in theory
           this should never happen, in practice indexes can become corrupted due to software
           bugs or hardware failures.  REINDEX provides a recovery method.

       •   An index has become “bloated”, that is it contains many empty or nearly-empty pages.
           This can occur with B-tree indexes in PostgreSQL under certain uncommon access
           patterns.  REINDEX provides a way to reduce the space consumption of the index by
           writing a new version of the index without the dead pages. See Section 25.2 for more
           information.

       •   You have altered a storage parameter (such as fillfactor) for an index, and wish to
           ensure that the change has taken full effect.

       •   If an index build fails with the CONCURRENTLY option, this index is left as “invalid”.
           Such indexes are useless but it can be convenient to use REINDEX to rebuild them. Note
           that only REINDEX INDEX is able to perform a concurrent build on an invalid index.

PARAMETERS

INDEX
Recreate the specified index. This form of REINDEX cannot be executed inside a
transaction block when used with a partitioned index.

TABLE
Recreate all indexes of the specified table. If the table has a secondary “TOAST”
table, that is reindexed as well. This form of REINDEX cannot be executed inside a
transaction block when used with a partitioned table.

SCHEMA
Recreate all indexes of the specified schema. If a table of this schema has a
secondary “TOAST” table, that is reindexed as well. Indexes on shared system catalogs
are also processed. This form of REINDEX cannot be executed inside a transaction
block.

DATABASE
Recreate all indexes within the current database, except system catalogs. Indexes on
system catalogs are not processed. This form of REINDEX cannot be executed inside a
transaction block.

SYSTEM
Recreate all indexes on system catalogs within the current database. Indexes on shared
system catalogs are included. Indexes on user tables are not processed. This form of
REINDEX cannot be executed inside a transaction block.

name
The name of the specific index, table, or database to be reindexed. Index and table
names can be schema-qualified. Presently, REINDEX DATABASE and REINDEX SYSTEM can only
reindex the current database. Their parameter is optional, and it must match the
current database's name.

CONCURRENTLY
When this option is used, PostgreSQL will rebuild the index without taking any locks
that prevent concurrent inserts, updates, or deletes on the table; whereas a standard
index rebuild locks out writes (but not reads) on the table until it's done. There are
several caveats to be aware of when using this option — see Rebuilding Indexes
Concurrently below.

For temporary tables, REINDEX is always non-concurrent, as no other session can access
them, and non-concurrent reindex is cheaper.

TABLESPACE
Specifies that indexes will be rebuilt on a new tablespace.

VERBOSE
Prints a progress report as each index is reindexed.

boolean
Specifies whether the selected option should be turned on or off. You can write TRUE,
ON, or 1 to enable the option, and FALSE, OFF, or 0 to disable it. The boolean value
can also be omitted, in which case TRUE is assumed.

new_tablespace
The tablespace where indexes will be rebuilt.

NOTES

If you suspect corruption of an index on a user table, you can simply rebuild that index,
or all indexes on the table, using REINDEX INDEX or REINDEX TABLE.

Things are more difficult if you need to recover from corruption of an index on a system
table. In this case it's important for the system to not have used any of the suspect
indexes itself. (Indeed, in this sort of scenario you might find that server processes are
crashing immediately at start-up, due to reliance on the corrupted indexes.) To recover
safely, the server must be started with the -P option, which prevents it from using
indexes for system catalog lookups.

One way to do this is to shut down the server and start a single-user PostgreSQL server
with the -P option included on its command line. Then, REINDEX DATABASE, REINDEX SYSTEM,
REINDEX TABLE, or REINDEX INDEX can be issued, depending on how much you want to
reconstruct. If in doubt, use REINDEX SYSTEM to select reconstruction of all system
indexes in the database. Then quit the single-user server session and restart the regular
server. See the postgres(1) reference page for more information about how to interact with
the single-user server interface.

Alternatively, a regular server session can be started with -P included in its command
line options. The method for doing this varies across clients, but in all libpq-based
clients, it is possible to set the PGOPTIONS environment variable to -P before starting
the client. Note that while this method does not require locking out other clients, it
might still be wise to prevent other users from connecting to the damaged database until
repairs have been completed.

REINDEX is similar to a drop and recreate of the index in that the index contents are
rebuilt from scratch. However, the locking considerations are rather different. REINDEX
locks out writes but not reads of the index's parent table. It also takes an ACCESS
EXCLUSIVE lock on the specific index being processed, which will block reads that attempt
to use that index. In particular, the query planner tries to take an ACCESS SHARE lock on
every index of the table, regardless of the query, and so REINDEX blocks virtually any
queries except for some prepared queries whose plan has been cached and which don't use
this very index. In contrast, DROP INDEX momentarily takes an ACCESS EXCLUSIVE lock on the
parent table, blocking both writes and reads. The subsequent CREATE INDEX locks out writes
but not reads; since the index is not there, no read will attempt to use it, meaning that
there will be no blocking but reads might be forced into expensive sequential scans.

Reindexing a single index or table requires being the owner of that index or table.
Reindexing a schema or database requires being the owner of that schema or database. Note
specifically that it's thus possible for non-superusers to rebuild indexes of tables owned
by other users. However, as a special exception, when REINDEX DATABASE, REINDEX SCHEMA or
REINDEX SYSTEM is issued by a non-superuser, indexes on shared catalogs will be skipped
unless the user owns the catalog (which typically won't be the case). Of course,
superusers can always reindex anything.

Reindexing partitioned indexes or partitioned tables is supported with REINDEX INDEX or
REINDEX TABLE, respectively. Each partition of the specified partitioned relation is
reindexed in a separate transaction. Those commands cannot be used inside a transaction
block when working on a partitioned table or index.

When using the TABLESPACE clause with REINDEX on a partitioned index or table, only the
tablespace references of the leaf partitions are updated. As partitioned indexes are not
updated, it is recommended to separately use ALTER TABLE ONLY on them so as any new
partitions attached inherit the new tablespace. On failure, it may not have moved all the
indexes to the new tablespace. Re-running the command will rebuild all the leaf partitions
and move previously-unprocessed indexes to the new tablespace.

If SCHEMA, DATABASE or SYSTEM is used with TABLESPACE, system relations are skipped and a
single WARNING will be generated. Indexes on TOAST tables are rebuilt, but not moved to
the new tablespace.

Rebuilding Indexes Concurrently
Rebuilding an index can interfere with regular operation of a database. Normally
PostgreSQL locks the table whose index is rebuilt against writes and performs the entire
index build with a single scan of the table. Other transactions can still read the table,
but if they try to insert, update, or delete rows in the table they will block until the
index rebuild is finished. This could have a severe effect if the system is a live
production database. Very large tables can take many hours to be indexed, and even for
smaller tables, an index rebuild can lock out writers for periods that are unacceptably
long for a production system.

PostgreSQL supports rebuilding indexes with minimum locking of writes. This method is
invoked by specifying the CONCURRENTLY option of REINDEX. When this option is used,
PostgreSQL must perform two scans of the table for each index that needs to be rebuilt and
wait for termination of all existing transactions that could potentially use the index.
This method requires more total work than a standard index rebuild and takes significantly
longer to complete as it needs to wait for unfinished transactions that might modify the
index. However, since it allows normal operations to continue while the index is being
rebuilt, this method is useful for rebuilding indexes in a production environment. Of
course, the extra CPU, memory and I/O load imposed by the index rebuild may slow down
other operations.

The following steps occur in a concurrent reindex. Each step is run in a separate
transaction. If there are multiple indexes to be rebuilt, then each step loops through all
the indexes before moving to the next step.

1. A new transient index definition is added to the catalog pg_index. This definition
will be used to replace the old index. A SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE lock at session level
is taken on the indexes being reindexed as well as their associated tables to prevent
any schema modification while processing.

2. A first pass to build the index is done for each new index. Once the index is built,
its flag pg_index.indisready is switched to “true” to make it ready for inserts,
making it visible to other sessions once the transaction that performed the build is
finished. This step is done in a separate transaction for each index.

3. Then a second pass is performed to add tuples that were added while the first pass was
running. This step is also done in a separate transaction for each index.

4. All the constraints that refer to the index are changed to refer to the new index
definition, and the names of the indexes are changed. At this point,
pg_index.indisvalid is switched to “true” for the new index and to “false” for the
old, and a cache invalidation is done causing all sessions that referenced the old
index to be invalidated.

5. The old indexes have pg_index.indisready switched to “false” to prevent any new tuple
insertions, after waiting for running queries that might reference the old index to
complete.

6. The old indexes are dropped. The SHARE UPDATE EXCLUSIVE session locks for the indexes
and the table are released.

If a problem arises while rebuilding the indexes, such as a uniqueness violation in a
unique index, the REINDEX command will fail but leave behind an “invalid” new index in
addition to the pre-existing one. This index will be ignored for querying purposes because
it might be incomplete; however it will still consume update overhead. The psql \d command
will report such an index as INVALID:

postgres=# \d tab
Table "public.tab"
Column | Type | Modifiers
--------+---------+-----------
col | integer |
Indexes:
"idx" btree (col)
"idx_ccnew" btree (col) INVALID

If the index marked INVALID is suffixed ccnew, then it corresponds to the transient index
created during the concurrent operation, and the recommended recovery method is to drop it
using DROP INDEX, then attempt REINDEX CONCURRENTLY again. If the invalid index is instead
suffixed ccold, it corresponds to the original index which could not be dropped; the
recommended recovery method is to just drop said index, since the rebuild proper has been
successful.

Regular index builds permit other regular index builds on the same table to occur
simultaneously, but only one concurrent index build can occur on a table at a time. In
both cases, no other types of schema modification on the table are allowed meanwhile.
Another difference is that a regular REINDEX TABLE or REINDEX INDEX command can be
performed within a transaction block, but REINDEX CONCURRENTLY cannot.

Like any long-running transaction, REINDEX on a table can affect which tuples can be
removed by concurrent VACUUM on any other table.

REINDEX SYSTEM does not support CONCURRENTLY since system catalogs cannot be reindexed
concurrently.

Furthermore, indexes for exclusion constraints cannot be reindexed concurrently. If such
an index is named directly in this command, an error is raised. If a table or database
with exclusion constraint indexes is reindexed concurrently, those indexes will be
skipped. (It is possible to reindex such indexes without the CONCURRENTLY option.)

Each backend running REINDEX will report its progress in the pg_stat_progress_create_index
view. See Section 28.4.4 for details.

EXAMPLES

       Rebuild a single index:

           REINDEX INDEX my_index;

       Rebuild all the indexes on the table my_table:

           REINDEX TABLE my_table;

       Rebuild all indexes in a particular database, without trusting the system indexes to be
       valid already:

           $ export PGOPTIONS="-P"
           $ psql broken_db
           ...
           broken_db=> REINDEX DATABASE broken_db;
           broken_db=> \q

       Rebuild indexes for a table, without blocking read and write operations on involved
       relations while reindexing is in progress:

           REINDEX TABLE CONCURRENTLY my_broken_table;

COMPATIBILITY

       There is no REINDEX command in the SQL standard.