Forum OpenACS Development: Postgresql startup parameters?

Posted by Ken Kennedy on 10/03/01 11:34 PM

OK...I give. I CANNOT find the recommended values for sort_mem, shared_buffers, etc. I've looked in bboard, in the install docs, all over the place. My tester for bookmarks is getting FAR worse performance than I am, with far fewer bookmarks, and I trying to cover all the bases. Am I remembering a recommendation of 1000 for shared_buffers as correct? (vs. the default of 64)

And feel FREE to point me towards the correct file or bboard post...at least this one will get saved with 'shared_buffers' mentioned, and I can search for that and find it again...*grin*

Thanks!

2: Response to Postgresql startup parameters? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 10/04/01 01:27 AM

Try "-B 1000" for the shared buffer size. This will eat 8 MB on your system and is reasonable for a test site. For a production site you'd probably use a much larger value, since even homeless folks in Portland can afford 1 GB RAM these days (I'm not kidding, I know a guy who lives in the back of a pick-up truck who was a beta tester for MAC Darwin).

We need to update this information for our install documentation because
many of the parameters can be set much more nicely in a control file as of PG 7.1.

3: Response to Postgresql startup parameters? (response to 1)

Posted by Ken Kennedy on 10/04/01 02:39 AM

Thanks, Don. That's what I was remembering. I do indeed like the new postgresql.conf file, it's great! (Thanks to the Debian postgresql package, I was using it w/o knowing it...*grin*).

Oh, and a general piece of info to others (I'm sure you already know this); 'show sort_mem;' and 'show shared_buffers;' both work from the psql command line. I'm used to this on Oracle, but I was pleasantly surprised with postgresql...

4: Response to Postgresql startup parameters? (response to 1)

Posted by Jun Yamog on 10/04/01 05:40 PM

I use this one for our live servers. Is according to the tips of Don Bacus in one of the docs for installing OpenACS.

postmaster -o '-B 2000 -o -S2000

Our old config has -N (some number i forgot). Is this useful?

5: Response to Postgresql startup parameters? (response to 1)

Posted by Don Baccus on 10/04/01 06:38 PM

-N is the number of back ends, which defaults to 32. Whether or not that's enough depends on the number of AOLserver threads and pool connections you configure. I usually set -N high (say 100) then throttle the load via AOLserver parameters.