I've just been looking through the options which can and cannot be set in
postgresql.conf and have a few points to raise.

1.  There are some undocumented options which appear to relate to WAL:

        Name                    Variable                Default         Set by

        checkpoint_timeout      CheckPointTimeout       300             Startup
        wal_buffers             XLOGbuffers             8               Startup
        wal_files               XLOGfiles               0               Startup
        wal_debug               &XLOG_DEBU              0               Superuser
        commit_delay            &CommitDelay            5               User

    Is there any text anywhere to explain what these do? (Point me to that or
    some commented code, and I'll write a documentation patch.)

2.  The following command line options to postgres don't have an equivalent in
    postgresql.conf.  Is that intentional?  (I suppose it is in several cases,
    and I have left out some where it is obviously intentional.)  I can't see
    why these items can't be put in the configuration file:


        Option          Action

        -C              Noversion = true   [not documented in postgres man page]
        -D              potential_Datadir = arg      [set PGDATA]
        -E              EchoQuery = true   [echo queries to log]
        -e              EuroDates = true   [use European format for dates]
        -N              UseNewLine = 0     [newline is not a query separator]
        -o              [set stdout, stderr to file arg]

3.  I see the -E is documented as being for stand-alone mode only; in fact it
    is useful for getting the query into the backend log in normal operation.

4.  The documentation for -o is confusing:

        -o file-name

        Sends all debugging and error output to OutputFile. If the backend
        is running under the postmaster, error messages are still sent to
        the frontend process as well as to OutputFile, but debugging output
        is sent to the controlling tty of the postmaster (since only one        
        file descriptor can be sent to an actual file).

    I think this is saying that, under the postmaster, debugging output does
    not get sent to OutputFile, and error messages are sent both to OutputFile
    and to the frontend.  Is that correct?

-- 
Oliver Elphick                                [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Isle of Wight                              http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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