On Thu, Sep  5, 2013 at 06:14:33PM +0200, Magnus Hagander wrote:
> > I have developed the attached patch which implements an auto-tuned
> > effective_cache_size which is 4x the size of shared buffers.  I had to
> > set effective_cache_size to its old 128MB default so the EXPLAIN
> > regression tests would pass unchanged.
> 
> That's not really autotuning though. ISTM that making the *default* 4
> x shared_buffers might make perfect sense, but do we really need to
> hijack the value of "-1" for that? That might be useful for some time
> when we have actual autotuning, that somehow inspects the system and
> tunes it from there.
>
> I also don't think it should be called autotuning, when it's just a
> "smarter default value".
> 
> I like the feature, though, just not the packaging.

That "auto-tuning" text came from the wal_buffer documentation, which
does exactly this based on shared_buffers:

        The contents of the WAL buffers are written out to disk at every
        transaction commit, so extremely large values are unlikely to
        provide a significant benefit.  However, setting this value to at
        least a few megabytes can improve write performance on a busy
-->     server where many clients are committing at once.  The auto-tuning
                                                               -----------
        selected by the default setting of -1 should give reasonable
        results in most cases.

I am fine with rewording and not using -1, but we should change the
wal_buffer default and documentation too then.  I am not sure what other
value than -1 to use?  0?  I figure if we ever get better auto-tuning,
we would just remove this functionality and make it better.

-- 
  Bruce Momjian  <br...@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + It's impossible for everything to be true. +


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