Re: Initial database size on disk

On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 10:23 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 01:22 +0100, Simon Riggs wrote:
> > On Sun, 2010-06-20 at 01:54 +0200, Murray Cumming wrote:
> >
> > > When using the initdb command-line utility to create a new PostgreSQL
> > > database cluster, is there any way to specify the starting size used on
> > > disk? By default it seems to take around 38MB.
> >
> > Why do you want to do that? Make it bigger, or smaller?
>
> I would like to make it smaller. I use PostgreSQL in my Glom application
> to host (initially) small amounts of data, starting a PostgreSQL
> instance automatically whenever the data must be opened.

You can compile it smaller if you want, though you might hit some
problems nobody has seen before.

There appears to be a fair amount of "wasted" space, which tells me
nobody has ever really looked at this.

WAL files are 16MB, so you're main problem is there.

Use a compressed filesystem.

--
Simon Riggs www.2ndQuadrant.com
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Training and Services