Re: [HACKERS] Avahi support for Postgresql

Am Samstag, den 29.03.2008, 12:25 +0000 schrieb tomas(at)tuxteam(dot)de:
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> On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 01:13:38PM +0100, Mathias Hasselmann wrote:
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> [...]
>
> > Avahi/Bonjour/DNS-SD support[1] is very important, for integrating
> > Postgresql with modern desktop environments like OSX, GNOME, KDE: It's
> > very convenient to choose active DBMS servers in your local network from
> > a list, instead of memorizing "cryptic" connection parameters.
>
> [...]
>
> > People not wanting DNS-SD support for their server can easily control
> > that feature via the "--with-avahi" configure scripts.
>
> Sorry for a dumb question, but I couldn't figure that out from your
> references [1]..[4]: does that mean that the PostgreSQL server would
> "advertise itself" on the local net? Or what is the purpose of liking-in
> libavahi into the postmaster?

Yes, that's the purpose.

> Surely one wouldn't want this in a data center?

Yes, this feature definitely targets small-office use, personal use, DB
developers. Don't know enough about data centers to judge the impact
there, but since Avahi - as used in the patch - announces to the local
network only, the impact sould be small.

Still you can tell Avahi to explicitly announce at a certain, non-local
domain, but this feature is not implemented by the patch. Maybe database
developers in large network environments could make use of such
announcements. It would be trivial to add.

> Is there a possiblity to disable that at run time?

The feature is disabled by default. As long as you do not specify a
zeroconf_name in your configuration file, nothing happens. This is the
same behavior as established by the Bonjour code.

Ciao,
Mathias
--
Mathias Hasselmann <mathias(at)openismus(dot)com>
http://www.openismus.com/ - We can get it done.