Re: A smaller default postgresql.conf

On Wednesday 20 August 2008 02:22:26 Jaime Casanova wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 19, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
> > Robert Treat <xzilla(at)users(dot)sourceforge(dot)net> writes:
> >> I'd still like to see us adopt the proposal from some time ago where
> >> we stop commenting out the parameters at all, but short of that,
> >> hiding options seems about the worst choice we could make.
> >
> > Well, there seems to be a very substantial body of opinion that says
> > we *do* need to hide "uninteresting" options.
>
> more to the point... not just "uninteresting" but "dangerous for the
> uninformed" ones...
> i have seen to many people turning off fsync in OLTP systems 'cause
> someone tolds them that will improve speed...
> and work_mem setted at 256Mb because that improves a bad query that
> should be rewritten as something more sanely...

This is a false argument, because people can just as easily be told "you
should add fsync=off into you blank postgresql.conf" and then they are in the
same boat.

Most of the newbie confusion comes from a lack of understanding of how and
what to tune. Adding a full on tuning guide into the docs would help with
that. Untill then, we should point them to
http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Tuning_Your_PostgreSQL_Server

--
Robert Treat
Build A Brighter LAMP :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL