Date: Wed, 29 Sep 2004 16:15:56 -0400
From: Alvaro Herrera <alvherre@dcc.uchile.cl>
To: "Marc G. Fournier" <scrappy@postgresql.org>
Cc: Josh Berkus <josh@agliodbs.com>, pgsql-advocacy@postgresql.org,
	Bruce Momjian <pgman@candle.pha.pa.us>,
	PostgreSQL www <pgsql-www@postgresql.org>
Subject: Re: [pgsql-advocacy] Server unreliability
Message-ID: <20040929201556.GB5275@dcc.uchile.cl>
References: <200409291713.i8THDLn14086@candle.pha.pa.us>
	<200409291152.05741.josh@agliodbs.com>
	<20040929155958.U93533@ganymede.hub.org>
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On Wed, Sep 29, 2004 at 04:07:20PM -0300, Marc G. Fournier wrote:

> as to what advantages the jail's provide ... mainly, security ... we can 
> easily provide root access to pugs.postgresql.org, as an example, so that 
> Fred (please tell me I remembered right?) can do whatever work he wants, 
> without giving him full root on the developer jail ... same with all of 
> the other jails ... Chris has full root on gborg, so that he doesn't have 
> to ask someone else to do something when he notices a problem (ie. restart 
> mailman) ...

This business about anyone having to restart anything is strange.  I
don't run mailman lists personally anymore, but back when I used to,
there was no need to restart anything.  This sounds like there are other
reliability problems that should be attacked.

Also I understand that it's a problem that fsck takes 8 hours to run.
However, why on earth is fsck running in the first place?  Do the
servers go down unexpectedly on regular basis?  This also screams of a
more fundamental problem that should be solved.

Another thing: I've seen several times already PHP warnings show up
about pg_query not getting a good connection or similar problems.  Isn't
normal advice to check return codes before even trying to use the
connections?  Why isn't this done in the main postgresql.org code, where
anyone can see it, is beyond me.  Of course the solution to the
underlying problem is to restart the Postgres server, but why should we
inform the user that Postgres' own database server is down, in the worst
possible way?

Just random thoughts ...

-- 
Alvaro Herrera (<alvherre[a]dcc.uchile.cl>)
"Hay dos momentos en la vida de un hombre en los que no debería
especular: cuando puede permitírselo y cuando no puede" (Mark Twain)