Stef,
> => 1. Make sure that the WAL files (pg_xlog) are on a seperate disk from the
> => database files, either through mounting or symlinking.
>
> I'm not sure I understand how this helps?
It gives you better fsync write performance on a low-end disk setup.
Otherwise, the disk is forced to do a hop-back-and-forth between the database
and the xlog, resulting in much slower updates and thus the database tying up
blocks of RAM longer -- particularly if your shared_buffers are set very low,
which they will be.
On RAID setups, this is unnecessary becuase the RAID takes care of disk access
management. But on a low-end, 2-IDE-disk machine, you have to do it.
--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco