Re: initdb profiles

Peter Eisentraut wrote:

>Andrew Dunstan wrote:
>  
>
>>I accept the "run from init.d" argument. So then, is there a case for
>>increasing the limits that initdb works with, to reflect the steep
>>rise we have seen in typically available memory at the low end?
>>    
>>
>
>There is a compromise that I think we cannot make.  For production 
>deployment, shared buffers are typically sized at about 10% to 25% of 
>available phyiscal memory.  I don't think we want to have a default 
>installation of PostgreSQL that takes 10% or more of memory just like 
>that.  It just doesn't look good.
>  
>

I have a single instance of apache running on this machine. It's not 
doing anything, but even so it's consuming 20% of physical memory. By 
contrast, my 3 postmasters are each consuming 0.5% of memory. All with 
default settings. I don't think we are in any danger of looking bad for 
being greedy. If anything we are in far greater danger of looking bad 
from being far too conservative and paying a performance price for that. 
There's nothing magical about the numbers we use.

>So the question whether initdb should by default consider up to 1000 or 
>up to 4000 buffers is still worth discussion, but doesn't solve the 
>tuning issue to a reasonable degree.
>
>
>  
>

True, but that doesn't mean it's not worth doing anyway.

cheers

andrew