On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 3:43 PM, Bob Pawley <rjpawley@shaw.ca> wrote:
> In pg_hba there is a reference to reloading postmaster using pg_ctl.
>
> Does postmaster reload when the server is restarted??
Yep. restart shuts down pgsql, and then starts it up fresh, so it has
to read its config files etc. Reload is useful because it doesn't
shut down a server, which can be handy on 24/7 machines that need
config changes.
As noted by others, some changes require a restart, basically the
things the server can't change while it's running, like share_buffers,
which are allocated at start up.