Re: initdb profiles

Andrew Dunstan wrote:
> I accept the "run from init.d" argument. So then, is there a case for
> increasing the limits that initdb works with, to reflect the steep
> rise we have seen in typically available memory at the low end?

There is a compromise that I think we cannot make.  For production 
deployment, shared buffers are typically sized at about 10% to 25% of 
available phyiscal memory.  I don't think we want to have a default 
installation of PostgreSQL that takes 10% or more of memory just like 
that.  It just doesn't look good.

So the question whether initdb should by default consider up to 1000 or 
up to 4000 buffers is still worth discussion, but doesn't solve the 
tuning issue to a reasonable degree.

What I would like to see is that initdb would end with saying that the 
system is not really tuned and that I should run pg-some-program to 
improve that.  pg-some-program would analyze my system, ask me a few 
questions, and then output a suggested configuration (or apply it right 
away).  Again, the challenge is to write that program.

-- 
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/