Oh, a bit more on the above ... I've got query logging turned on and it and all PG files (including the WAL (REDO) log) are all on the same disk. On the other hand this is all being done in a huge transaction so the WAL's not being fsynch'd after each bboard insert, so I may be overestimating the performance in a more general context. However the WAL blocks are being written and the PG datafiles are written at each checkpoint and Linux itself writes the file cache every so often so there really is quite a bit of disk I/O going on.
(I'm using the present tense because I'm busy importing the openacs.org forums into my OpenACS 4 test platform so I can do some performance testing on the speed-up stuff I've been working on recently).
Also regarding Slashdotting. AFAIK Ben did not track the slashdot volume. However the trigger was a reference to the infamous "Why not MySQL?" paper and resulting comments, so undoubtably a lot of Slashdotters paid a visit. After all, they're mostly rabid MySQL fans and get deeply offended whenever anyone criticized their favorite Open Source database (ignoring the fact that it wasn't Open Source at the time, as we don't want to fan the flames, do we? :)
Ben used it as a work machine at the time and did report that load barely topped "1" on the modest dual processor system.
