Re: initdb change

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 09:29:03AM -0700, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> On Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:04:01 -0700
> David Fetter <david@fetter.org> wrote:
> 
> > > > When -X is set to "existing", it would check whether pg_xlog
> > > > is a directory and the only thing in $PGDATA.  One way to do
> > > > that is to add a new return code to check_data_dir() and a new
> > > > branch of the case statement after it's called.
> > > 
> > > Why is this useful?  It seems like just extra complication.
> 
> At no time should I ask I DBA to do this:
> 
> service postgresql stop
> mv /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_xlog /xlogs/pg_xlog
> ln -sf /xlogs/pg_xlog /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_xlog
> service postgresql start
> 
> We either need to provide a way to initialize it at initdb, allow
> xlogs to be in table space or add a GUC for the location.

There's already a way to specify where xlogs should be via
-X/--xlogdir.  What that doesn't do is put the xlogdir where a DBA
would naturally expect to find it.  When that DBA doesn't find it in
the place they expect, very bad knock-on decisions are likely to
result.

Cheers,
David.
-- 
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778  AIM: dfetter666  Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter      XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

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