On Sun, 2012-06-17 at 12:40 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> writes:
> > On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
> >> Uh, that part is just incorrect. Several sets of platform packages
> >> certainly do initdb for you. And AFAIK every single one of them on
> >> Linux at least do service setup for you.
>
> > Hmm, clearly it's been a while since I did a PG installation on Debian
> > (oddly!), as that does seem to leave the server up and running. I'm
> > fairly certain it didn't in the past.
> > RPMs on the other hand, do not.
>
> FWIW, Red-Hat-based systems have a strong distro policy against starting
> servers merely because the package got installed --- the theory is that
> an "everything" install should not leave the user running a bunch of
> servers he doesn't know about and maybe hasn't configured securely.
>
> I'm a bit surprised to hear that Debian does it differently; although
> it's possible that they distinguish manual from automatic install
> scenarios. It's a little bit saner to do an auto service start if you
> know that the user explicitly requested this specific package.
>
When you use aptitude or apt-get to install the server package, it will
install the binaires, execute initdb, and start the server. I much
prefer the RPM way of doing it (IOW, not starting the server). Anyway, I
guess there are both pros and cons in both methods.
--
Guillaume
http://blog.guillaume.lelarge.info
http://www.dalibo.com