Date: Tue, 8 May 2007 11:35:50 +0200
From: "Steinar H. Gunderson" <sgunderson@bigfoot.com>
To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Best OS for Postgres 8.2
Message-ID: <20070508093550.GB2537@uio.no>
Mail-Followup-To: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
References: <1178574927.533849.90730@e51g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
	<Pine.GSO.4.64.0705072330240.24382@westnet.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
Content-Disposition: inline
In-Reply-To: <Pine.GSO.4.64.0705072330240.24382@westnet.com>
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.13 (2006-08-11)

On Mon, May 07, 2007 at 11:56:14PM -0400, Greg Smith wrote:
> Debian packages PostgreSQL in a fashion unique to it; it's arguable 
> whether it's better or not (I don't like it), but going with that will 
> assure your installation is a bit non-standard compared with most Linux 
> installas.  The main reasons you'd pick Debian are either that you like 
> that scheme (which tries to provide some structure to running multiple 
> clusters on one box), or that you plan to rely heavily on community 
> packages that don't come with the Redhat distributions and therefore would 
> appreciate how easy it is to use apt-get against the large Debian software 
> repository.

Just to add to this: As far as I understand it, this scheme was originally
mainly put in place to allow multiple _versions_ of Postgres to be installed
alongside each other, for smoother upgrades. (There's a command that does all
the details of running first pg_dumpall for the users and groups, then the
new pg_dump with -Fc to get all data and LOBs over, then some hand-fixing to
change explicit paths to $libdir, etc...)

Of course, you lose all that if you need a newer Postgres version than the OS
provides. (Martin Pitt, the Debian/Ubuntu maintainer of Postgres -- the
packaging in Debian and Ubuntu is the same, sans version differences -- makes
his own backported packages of the newest Postgres to Debian stable; it's up
to you if you'd trust that or not.)

/* Steinar */
-- 
Homepage: http://www.sesse.net/