how to remove large objects in postgres

Question

should I call lo_unlink ? A delete didn't remove the object from pg_largeobject.

Answer 1

You can also clean up large objects from the command-line using

$ vacuumlo -U username databasename

Answer 2

Yes, you need to explicitly call lo_unlink(). I assume you just DELETEd the row that held a reference to it, and that will not remove the actual large object.

If you only ever reference it from the same place, you can always create a trigger to do it automatically for you.