Re: pg_config, pg_service.conf, postgresql.conf ....

Mark Woodward wrote:

> I'm not sure that I agree. At least in my experience, I wouldn't have more
> than one installation of PostgreSQL in a production machine. It is
> potentially problematic.
> 

I agree with you for production environments, but for development, test, 
support (and pre-sales) machines there are reasonable requirements for 
several.

Even if you have only one installation - something to tell you *where* 
the binaries are installed is convenient - as there are quite a few 
common locations (e.g. packages installing in /usr or /usr/local, source 
builds in /usr/local/pgsql or /opt/pgsql). I've seen many *uncommon* 
variants: (e.g. /usr/local/postgresql, /usr/local/postgresql-<version>, 
/usr/local/pgsql/<version>, ...).

Admittedly, given that the binaries are likely to be in the 
cluster-owners default PATH, it is not as hard to find them as the data 
directory. However, this is all about convenience it would seem, since 
(for many *nix platforms) two simple searches will give you most of what 
is needed:

$ locate postmaster
$ locate pg_hba.conf


Cheers

Mark