Re: Counting distinct names

Christopher Sawtell <csawtell@xtra.co.nz> writes:
> 1) There are files on the ftp sites which seem to be the "whole thing"
> and what I suppose is the "whole thing" cut up into smaller sections.

Yes.

>   Am I correct? Or do I need to d/l the smaller files as well?
>   A README_for_Download might be a good idea.

Yo, Marc ... where's the documentation about the new tarfile sections?

> 2) I couldn't find a --database-dir=[/var/lib/pgsql/data] option in
> the output from ./configure --help.  How can one configure pg to place
> it's database in a defined place in the file system? btw the default
> of /var/lib/pgsql/data seems pretty sensible.

The default location is PREFIX/data; I don't think there is a configure
option to change that without setting --prefix.  However, you can set it
at runtime with the -D options to initdb and postmaster, so adding yet
another configure switch might be gilding the lily.

> 3) Some of the scripts and binary files for the subsiduary tools have
> to be installed by hand. If you need to know what, I'd be happy to
> re-install pg and take notes.

News to me, other than that the perl interface module usually has to be
installed separately because of permission issues.  What did you see
missing?

> 5) Is the idea of putting the data on a raw partition on the horizon?

Not really.  There are portability issues with that; furthermore, it's
not obvious that it'd be better.  The system's been developed and tuned
to sit atop a Unix kernel's disk cache.  Writing our own disk management
code would be a large investment of work and a large loss of portability
for very questionable benefits.  It might happen someday, but I think
we have many higher-priority tasks ahead...
        regards, tom lane