Wow, there's been a lot of discussion on this issue!
While it won't address some of the issues that have been brought up, there is one very simple thing we can do that will help sysadmins quite a lot: eliminate the postmaster's use of $PGDATA, and force the data directory to be specified on the command line. It's fine if the shell scripts still use $PGDATA, but the postmaster should not. The reason is that at least it'll always be possible for administrators to figure out where the data is by looking at the output of 'ps'. While I'd prefer to also see a GUC variable added to the config file that tells the postmaster where to look for the data, the above will at least simplify the postmaster's code (since the logic for dealing with $PGDATA can be eliminated) while eliminating some of the trouble administrators currently have with it. -- Kevin Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
