Message-ID: <444DB6F3.6000504@dunslane.net>
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 15:13:15 +0930
From: Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net>
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To: "Jim C. Nasby" <jnasby@pervasive.com>
Cc: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>, "Jonah H. Harris" <jonah.harris@gmail.com>,
	John DeSoi <desoi@pgedit.com>, Pgsql Hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: Google SoC--Idea Request
References: <20060417205455.GP49405@pervasive.com> <44452F9C.8000401@osdl.org>
	<AB8B2106-EA96-4577-845B-6604CC140AEC@pgedit.com>
	<36e682920604190909p68649a35m1953a7b4262b8852@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060423214524.GC4775@surnet.cl>
	<36e682920604231522w96183d0mbedfd7c70d574b58@mail.gmail.com>
	<20060424165112.GD38186@pervasive.com>
	<8743.1145932591@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<36e682920604241956s2bdd8880q2c479740d893c6fd@mail.gmail.com>
	<9008.1145934318@sss.pgh.pa.us>
	<20060425050017.GC81249@pervasive.com>
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Jim C. Nasby wrote:

>On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 11:05:18PM -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>  
>
>>"Jonah H. Harris" <jonah.harris@gmail.com> writes:
>>    
>>
>>>While the student could do some benchmarking on relatively new
>>>hardware and make suggestions, I agree with Tom.  Having to keep
>>>support for older platforms doesn't leave much flexibility to change
>>>the defaults.
>>>      
>>>
>>Another point here is that the defaults *are* reasonable for development
>>and for small installations; the people who are complaining are the ones
>>who expect to run terabyte databases without any tuning.  (I exaggerate
>>perhaps, but the point is valid.)
>>
>>We've talked more than once about offering multiple alternative
>>starting-point postgresql.conf files to give people an idea of what to
>>do for small/medium/large installations.  MySQL have done that for years
>>and it doesn't seem that users are unable to cope with the concept.
>>But doing this is (a) mostly a matter of testing and documenting, not
>>coding and (b) probably too small for a SoC project anyway.
>>    
>>
>
>My recollection was that there was opposition to offering multiple
>config files, but that there was a proposal to make initdb smarter about
>picking configuration values.
>
>Personally, I agree that multiple config files would be fine. Or a
>really fancy solution would be feeding a config option to initdb and
>have it generate an appropriate postgresql.conf.
>  
>


We have already done some initdb tuning improvements for 8.2 - shared 
buffers now tops out at 4000 instead of 1000 and initdb now sets 
max_fsm_pages at a more realistic level. (top is 200,000 instead of 
previously hardcoded 20,000).

I would have liked to increase max_connections too, but that would have 
caused problems on OSX, apparently. See previous discussion.

Personally I would much rather see a tuning advisor tool in more general 
use than just provide small/medium/large config setting files.


cheers

andrew