Re: postgresql.conf.*

On Wed, Jan 04, 2006 at 12:10:28PM -0800, Josh Berkus wrote:
> Paul,
>
> > Is there any reason we cannot ship with 3 .conf files?  For each one,
> > note the minimum system configuration required to support it.
> >
> > postgresql.conf.standard  (current)
> > postgresql.conf.medium  (1Gb of RAM, IDE RAID 1 (7200RPM))
> > postgresql.conf.performance (4Gb of RAM, SCSI RAID 10 (10000RPM))
>
> Because too many of the conf parameters are dependant on *exactly* the
> amount of RAM that you have.  So there isn't even a general file we can
Such as? I can't really think of any, except maybe effective_cache_size,
which isn't that critical.

> ship.   Also medium/performance isn't adequate, we'd need:
>
> .mixed.small_machine
> .mixed.large_machine
> .web.small_machine
> .web.large_machine
> .warehouse.large_machine

Why are so many options needed?

Every time this idea is brought up, people seem to think that the idea
is to produce some ideal configuration out-of-the-box, which of course
is exceptionally difficult. But *anything* would be far superior to what
we have now. Clearly there's no replacement for actually going in and
tuning things by hand, and anyone with any kind of database knowledge
will know that.

I know that there's efforts underway to improve upon the current default
config, and that's great. But those efforts have been underway for at
least 2 releases now, and I haven't seen any commitment that they'll be
in 8.2. In the meantime, shipping a few extra config files is something
we can do right now, and should have done back in 7.x, when the idea
first came up.
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant      jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software      http://pervasive.com    work: 512-231-6117
vcard: http://jim.nasby.net/pervasive.vcf       cell: 512-569-9461