I'm not using kubernetes and know nothing about it, but I don't need to restart postgres, only the 'lemmy' container that runs the lemmy backend. By doing this the connections are all severed, the RAM is freed up, and it's all good again. I should probably learn how to limit connections in another way!

Instead of doing all the working out about pictrs images, I'm just looking at using this: https://github.com/wereii/lemmy-thumbnail-cleaner

An added benefit being that it stays running and keeps your cache trimmed to the timeframe you state. I'm happy with a cache but after a week it's not really that helpful. Unfortunately the endpoint in pictrs that deletes the image and removed from the db that this script uses is not in pictrs 0.4.x so I thought I'd quickly run the upgrade in non-prod and test it out. It's still running, I started it about lunchtime on Saturday! I'm seriously considering pulling the plug and doing it properly into postgres, but it would be nice to know how long it's gonna take, so I'm also tempted to leave it running. It's running on an old Vaio laptop set up as a server. I think this machine is older than I first thought, perhaps from 2012, so that might explain a lot!