Re: autovacuum: recommended?

In response to Jean-David Beyer <jeandavid8(at)verizon(dot)net>:

> Decibel! wrote:
> > On Nov 18, 2007, at 1:26 PM, gabor wrote:
> >> hubert depesz lubaczewski wrote:
> >>> On Fri, Nov 16, 2007 at 10:40:43AM +0100, Gábor Farkas wrote:
> >>>> we are moving one database from postgresql-7.4 to postgresql-8.2.4.
> >>> any particular reason why not 8.2.5?
> >>
> >> the distribution i use only has 8.2.4 currently.
> >
> > Then I think you need to consider abandoning your distribution's
> > packages or find a better distribution. IIRC, 8.2.5 is over 2-3 months
> > old now; there's no reason a distribution shouldn't have it at this
> > point. (Unless of course you haven't kept your distribution
> > up-to-date... ;)
>
> Some people run distributions such as Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (their
> latest); I do. postgresql that comes with that.
>
> Now once they pick a version of a program, they seldom change it. They do
> put security and bug fixes in it by back-porting the changes into the source
> code and rebuilding it. I guess for postgresql the changes were too much for
> backporting, so they upgraded from postgresql-8.1.4-1.1 that came with it
> originally and are now up to postgresql-8.1.9-1.el5. I am pretty sure they
> will never upgrade RHEL5 to the 8.2 series because they do not do it to get
> new features.
>
> Now you may think there are better distributions than Red Hat Enterprise
> Linux 5, but enough people seem to think it good enough to pay for it and
> keep Red Hat in business. I doubt they are all foolish.
>
> Luckily I do not seem to be troubled by the problems experienced by the O.P.
>
> I do know that if I try to use .rpms from other sources, I can get in a lot
> of trouble with incompatible libraries. And I cannot upgrade the libraries
> without damaging other programs.

I think you've missed the point.

The discussion is not that the distro is bad because it hasn't moved from
8.1 -> 8.2. The comment is that it's bad because it hasn't updated a
major branch with the latest bug fixes. i.e. it hasn't moved from 8.1.4
to 8.1.5.

If this is indeed the case, I agree that such a distro isn't worth using.

--
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.
http://people.collaborativefusion.com/~wmoran/

wmoran(at)collaborativefusion(dot)com
Phone: 412-422-3463x4023