Re: '-i option' with Runlevel script (RPM version)

On Tuesday 15 October 2002 03:20 am, Gabriele Bartolini wrote:
>    I have read the archive, looking for posts which could help me solve
> this case. It is not a problem, as long as I can make it work, but it is
> a thing that ... I'd love to be solved in a more clean way.

>    I want to start up the postmaster process with the '-i' option, but
> the runlevel script which comes with the RPM, doesn't include it. The
> only way I could do to accomplish this, was to modify this script.

Well, first, welcome to PostgreSQL.  You will find that this is a really
industrial-strength database, with features that meet the needs of an
Internet-connected, or Intranet-connected, database server.

One of those features is the ability to be a totally local database server,
not accessible to the outside.  As of PostgreSQL 6.3, the default behavior of
the postmaster was changed to not open a TCP/IP socket by default.  This is,
in my opinion, a very good thing for security.  Up until the 7.0 version of
the RPMset, I had the '-i' in the initscript in /etc/rc.d/init.d.  At 7.1 I
decided to remove the -i for security reasons, as well as the fact that it
became very easy to enable TCP/IP socket listening in the file
/var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf.

Unfortunately many people became very confused by this, and the question 'Why
isn't -i the default'  or 'How do I get the -i behavior' has been very
frequently asked since then.

So the topic is dealt with thoroughly in the README.rpm-dist documentation
file distributed with the postgresql RPM.  To find this file, run the
following command:
rpm -ql postgresql | grep README
and it will show up in the listing.  Then use less, or your favorite file
reader, to read this file.
--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11