Subject: Postgres and raw devices

From: Stewart Allen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 15:13:24 -0500 (EST)

I once heard it rumored that Postgres supported using raw block devices
 instead of UFS. Is there any truth to this?

 -- -  Stewart Allen * [email-masked] * 617.562.5826 * FAX 617.562.0038  - -- 
         M.I.S. Manager * Open Environment Corporation * 617.562.0900          
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From: [email-masked] (Paul M. Aoki)
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 94 12:03:50 -0800

Stewart Allen <[email-masked]> writes:
>  I once heard it rumored that Postgres supported using raw block
>  devices instead of UFS. Is there any truth to this?

the standard postgres magnetic disk interface uses UFS.

people have developed various experimental optical disk jukebox
storage managers on top of raw device interfaces, but i doubt that's
what you meant.
--
  Paul M. Aoki          |  University of California at Berkeley
  [email-masked]  |  Dept. of EECS, Computer Science Division (#1776) 
                        |  Berkeley, CA 94720-1776

---

From: Stewart Allen <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 19 Nov 1994 17:02:08 -0500 (EST)

> storage managers on top of raw device interfaces, but i doubt that's

 I was thinking more along the lines of Informix Online, Sybase, and Oracle
 which support raw partitions. This eliminates the overhead of sitting on
 top of a filesystem, but introduces a great deal of complexity in management.

 This occured to me for two reasons:

 1) I want to implement a logical volume manager under Linux with features
    such as volume striping and other exotic performance enhancements. Raw
    devices would provide a tremendous speed enhancement with this.

 2) I've just completed a port of our Encompass toolkit to Linux in which I
    added support for Postgres database servers. This means Postgres can now
    be integrated into 3-tier client/server packages with PC's, Macs, and
    any other Unix boxes as clients. I was looking for a slight performance
    increase for a demo (not that Postgres doesn't already perform admirably)
    These guys are used to Oracle on Alphas.