Re: Copy database performance issue

On Mon, Oct 23, 2006 at 05:51:40PM -0400, Steve wrote:
> Hello there;
>
> I've got an application that has to copy an existing database to a new
> database on the same machine.
>
> I used to do this with a pg_dump command piped to psql to perform the
> copy; however the database is 18 gigs large on disk and this takes a LONG
> time to do.
>
> So I read up, found some things in this list's archives, and learned that
> I can use createdb --template=old_database_name to do the copy in a much
> faster way since people are not accessing the database while this copy
> happens.
>
>
> The problem is, it's still too slow. My question is, is there any way I
> can use 'cp' or something similar to copy the data, and THEN after that's
> done modify the database system files/system tables to recognize the
> copied database?

AFAIK, that's what initdb already does... it copies the database,
essentially doing what cp does.

> For what it's worth, I've got fsync turned off, and I've read every tuning
> thing out there and my settings there are probably pretty good. It's a
> Solaris 10 machine (V440, 2 processor, 4 Ultra320 drives, 8 gig ram) and
> here's some stats:

I don't think any of the postgresql.conf settings will really come into
play when you're doing this...
--
Jim Nasby jim(at)nasby(dot)net
EnterpriseDB http://enterprisedb.com 512.569.9461 (cell)