Re: proposal: Set effective_cache_size to greater of .conf value, shared_buffers

On Wed, Jan 9, 2013 at 3:39 PM, Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com> wrote:
>> It seems to me that pgfincore has the smarts we need to know about that,
>> and that Cédric has code and refenrences for making it work on all
>> platforms we care about (linux, bsd, windows for starters).
>
> Well, fincore is Linux-only, and for that matter only more recent
> versions of linux.  It would be great if we could just detect the RAM,
> but then we *still* have to ask the user if this is a dedicated box or not.

Not really. I'm convinced, and not only for e_c_s, that
autoconfiguration is within the realm of possibility.

However, since such a statement holds little weight without a patch
attached, I've been keeping it to myself (until I can invest the
effort needed for that patch).

In any case, as eavesdroppers can infer a cryptographic key by timing
operations or measuring power consumption, I'm pretty sure postgres
can infer cost metrics and/or time sharing with clever
instrumentation. The trick lies in making such instrumentation
uninstrusive.