On Fri, Jan 7, 2011 at 7:07 AM, Tom Lane
<tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us> wrote:
Samuel Gendler <
sgendler@ideasculptor.com> writes:
> Does it not seem that this insistence on shipping a default config that
> works out of the box on every system incurs a dramatic penalty when it comes
> to getting a useful postgres config for a production system?
> I'm sure this argument has probably been done to death on this list (I'm a
> relatively recent subscriber),
No kidding. Please review the archives.
The short answer is that even though modern machines tend to have plenty
of RAM, they don't tend to have correspondingly large default settings
of SHMMAX etc. If we crank up the default shared-memory-usage settings
to the point where PG won't start in a couple of MB, we won't accomplish
a thing in terms of "making it work out of the box"; we'll just put
another roadblock in front of newbies getting to try it at all.
Yes, I understand that. I was trying to make the point that, in an attempt to make things very easy for novice users, we are actually making them quite a bit more complex for novice users who want to do anything besides start the server. But no need to have the debate again.
--sam