Re: Questions on production rollout

On Sat, Mar 20, 2004 at 07:04:42PM -0800, Bill C. wrote:
> 1) A guy here had a compiled version of PostgreSQL for Solaris 8
> that he gave me to install on my Solaris 8 system. He said just
> untar it and you're good to go. I did, then I tried using the
> psql command to connect his server that he already had up and
> running on his system. Got an error because I don't have a gcc
> library installed. So here's an example of an install that worked
> on one machine but not the other. Is it possible to build a
> version that one can be reasonably sure is going to run on all
> systems with a given OS? I mean, if I know the client machine is
> Solaris 8, can I build a self-contained set of binaries that I
> can confidently say will run on other Solaris 8 machines?

Yes, but if you're using gcc you'll need either to make sure they
have the relevant gcc libraries installed (see the sun freeware site
for more on this), or you'll have to put together a little package of
relevant libraries, install that with the postgres tree, and alter
the user's LD_LIBRARY_PATH. I've used both these strategies, and
they both work.

> 2) I realize there are other configuration parameters involved.
> E.g. already encountered "SHMMAX value to small" message when
> trying to start server on my system. I changed it to something
> big, rebooted and it still didn't work. I'm not too worried that
> I can't eventually figure it out but it still has me a little
> spooked. Wouldn't want to put a client thru hell trying to get
> the server up and running. Are there other system configuration
> gotchas I should be aware of?

That's the biggest one. You should have a look at Chapter 16 of the
docs (see e.g.
<http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.4/interactive/runtime.html>) for
more detail. Solaris has just unbelievably low defaults for this, so
you'll for sure need to do some work there on every client's machine.

A

--
Andrew Sullivan | ajs(at)crankycanuck(dot)ca
In the future this spectacle of the middle classes shocking the avant-
garde will probably become the textbook definition of Postmodernism.
--Brad Holland