Re: [GENERAL] Setting up Postgres for production web/db work

See 'man postmaster' and 'man postgres' for available startup
options on number of servers, memory usage, etc.  Also, check out
www.postgresql.org under "Info Central"-->"Documentation" for a
host of pretty decent documents answering many of your
current/future questions.  Lots of very useful stuff found at
Deja.com as well (http://www.deja.com/home_ps.shtml)...deja is
archiving *all* pgsql mailing list posts).  Memory usage, number
of servers, etc. really depends on tuning for your
application/hardware, but running with defaults seems to be a
good starting point.

Things I wish I'd known about early on (some found in
documentation, some not):

    * The -F flag (a 2200% performance boost on inserts for me);
    * The -S flag (customizes amount of memory to be used for
sorts);
    * Vacuum is needed nightly at least, more often after many
inserts/deletes;
    * Vacuum can also fix certain showstoppers;
    * Some folks report it cannot be run safely while online with
a load;
    * How to turn timestamped db server logging on...
        http://www.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=562128922

Cheers,
Ed Loehr

Charles Martin wrote:

> We are about to set up a production web/db site with
> Apache 1.3.9, PHP 3.0.12, and PostgreSQL 6.5.2.  The
> platform is a single-cpu Dell server running FreeBSD
> 3.4-STABLE.  I have looked but have not seen anything
> with recommendations for how to set up Postgres for a
> production site.
>
> For example, is:
>
>     % postmaster
>
> the preferred invocation?  Should we be specifying
> something about the memory usage, number of processes,
> etc?  Is there a FAQ for how to set up cron jobs to do
> nightly dumps and etc with maximal efficiency?  Should
> we be vaccuuming regularly, and do we need to take the
> db offline to do so?  Etc.
>
> Any help on this issue would be greatly appreciated!