Background Writer (bgwriter) (PostgreSQL)
Bgwriter (background writer) pushes buffers to disk. Backend processes handling queries never have to wait for a write to occur as bgwriter will do it first.
Settings
bgwriter_delay: Specifiys how often bgwrite will run.
brwriter_lru_maxpages: Sets the maximum number of buffers that may be
flushed to disk in each run. When a buffer is not flushed due to the
maximum pages value being hit the maxwritten_clean value in
pg_stat_bgwriter is incremented. bgwriter_lru_multiplier: Number of
buffers that can be flushed on-demand due to a new backend process
(query), this value is brwriter_lru_maxpages *
bgwriter_lru_multiplier .
See Also
pg_stat_bgwriter
In PGSQL 8.4 bgwriter and checkpoint is part of the same process - checkpoint stats are also here
checkpoints_timed: CPs that have occured due to checkpoint_timeout checkpoints_req: Flushing of buffers due to checkpoint_segments and relatively one-off requirements such as when running a drop database command. maxwritten_clean: bgwriter did not run due to brwriter_lru_maxpages buffers_backend: Flushing of buffers due a new backend process (query).
A snapshot can be run with select *,now() from pg_stat_bgwriter;
See Also
http://www.issociate.de/board/post/504631/Details_about_pg_stat_bgwriter.html