Subject: Re: Initial database size on disk
From: Simon Riggs <simon@2ndQuadrant.com>
To: Murray Cumming <murrayc@murrayc.com>
Cc: pgsql-interfaces@postgresql.org
In-Reply-To: <1277022214.421.1.camel@murrayc-x61>
References: <1276991654.17689.2.camel@murrayc-x61>
	<1276993324.23257.102118.camel@ebony>
	<1277022214.421.1.camel@murrayc-x61>
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Date: Sun, 20 Jun 2010 11:58:43 +0100
Message-Id: <1277031523.23257.108542.camel@ebony>
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On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 10:23 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 01:22 +0100, Simon Riggs wrote:
> > On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 01:54 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> > 
> > > When using the initdb command-line utility to create a new PostgreSQL
> > > database cluster, is there any way to specify the starting size used on
> > > disk? By default it seems to take around 38MB.
> > 
> > Why do you want to do that? Make it bigger, or smaller?
> 
> I would like to make it smaller. I use PostgreSQL in my Glom application
> to host (initially) small amounts of data, starting a PostgreSQL
> instance automatically whenever the data must be opened.

You can compile it smaller if you want, though you might hit some
problems nobody has seen before.

There appears to be a fair amount of "wasted" space, which tells me
nobody has ever really looked at this.

WAL files are 16MB, so you're main problem is there.

Use a compressed filesystem.

-- 
 Simon Riggs           www.2ndQuadrant.com
 PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services