**Rod MacNeil wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I have a server running CentOS5 with 6gb of memory that will run
> postgres 8.3 exclusively.
> I would like to allocate 4gb of the memory to shared buffers for postgres.
It might be worth pausing at this point:
The various postgresql tuning guides usually suggest that on a dedicated
system, you should give postgres about 1/4 of the RAM for shared
buffers, while telling it that the effective_cache_size = 1/2 RAM.
Postgres will make good use of the OS cache as a file-cache - the
"effective_cache_size" setting is advisory to postgres that it can
expect about this much data to be in RAM.
Also, If you are setting up a new system, it's probably worth going for
8.4.2. Postgres is relatively easy to build from source.
HTH,
Richard