Re: Slashdot discussion

Travis Bauer wrote:
>
> Once I ran into a guy who said that the postgres rpm was broken in Red Hat
> 5.2. This was when I was first getting into postgres. I spent some time
> with it and realized that there were a number of things that had to be
> done before it would work: creating the postgres users, initializing the
> database, getting something into rc.d so it would boot up
> automatically. The RPM was not broken, but it was a pain to get postgres

And, if most people's experience with the RedHat 5.2 RPM's is what
they're going on, they need to get with the program -- RH 5.2 shipped
PostgreSQL *6.3.2* which is absolutely ancient. Although, at the time,
6.3.2 was better than nothing.

The newer RPM's, hopefully, have corrected many of the problems that
existed with the _horrid_ 6.3.2 RPMset RedHat shipped with 5.1/5.2 (5.0
shipped *6.2.1*, which we won't even talk about -- although it was a
better RPM set than *6.1.1*, which is where I first experienced the 'Joy
of PostgreSQL') And, yes, the 6.3.2 RPMset was _horrid_ -- only there
were you entreated to the joy of an upgrade from one release of 6.3.2 to
another release of 6.3.2 totally breaking your database without warning
(thanks to the misconcieved postgresql-data subpackage).

The PostgreSQL group has come light years from the days of 6.1.1 -- I
cannot overemphasize that! Although, I won't go as far as the 6.5
release statement of "This represents the team's Final Mastery..." :-).

The documentation is several orders of magnitude better in 7.x than
6.1.1 or even as late as 6.3.2. The web site is also much much better
-- I still remember the logo breaking through the brick wall.

So, if most people's experience with PostgreSQL is that old.....

--
Lamar Owen
WGCR Internet Radio
1 Peter 4:11