Matthew,
> ** Postgres is multi-process, not multi-threaded (?)
Correct.
> ** It's better to not use huge amount of sort-mem but instead let the OS do
> the caching (?)
That's "don't use a huge amount of *shared_buffers*". Sort_mem is a different
setting. However, I have never seen a database use more than 32mb sort mem
in a single process, so I don't think the 2GB limit will hurt you much ...
> ** My needs are really not going to be as big as I think they are if I
> manage the application/environment correctly (?)
Your needs *per process*. Also, PostgreSQL is not as much of a consumer of
RAM as it is a consumer of disk I/O.
> * FreeBSD is going to provide a better file system than Linux (because
> Linux only supports large files on journaling filesystems which impose
> extra over head) (this gleaned from this conversation and previous threads
> in archives)
No, the jury is still out on this one. ReiserFS is optimized for small
files, and I've done well with it although some posters report stability
problems, though all second-hand. We hope to test this sometime in the
upcoming months.
--
Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco