Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
So does this impact Postgresql's performance on Windows as well? I think Apache had to rewrite their Windows port to use threads instead of processes before they got decent performance on that platform. Any chance of Postgresql doing that sort of thing? Not that I'm asking for the change; I'd just as soon use this as one more reason to keep running it on linux. :-) --Wes Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] on 06/27/2001 06:58:18 PM To: Philip Molter [EMAIL PROTECTED] cc: Lamar Owen [EMAIL PROTECTED], Tim Barnard [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] (bcc: Wesley Sheldahl/Lex/Lexmark) Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL I had almost given up on using Postgres for this system because under Solaris, it just couldn't cut it (MySQL could do the work with one CPU while Postgres took up even more CPU and required *both* CPUs to be enabled), but when we moved the system to a Linux box, things worked much better. Ah, back to a PostgreSQL topic. :-) My guess on this one is that Solaris is slower for PostgreSQL because process switching is _much_ heavier on Solaris than other OS's. This is because of the way they implemented processes in SVr4. They got quite heavy, almost requiring kernel threads so you weren't switching processes all the time. In a sense threads were a solution to a process bloating problem. Linux/BSD have much lighter processes and hence work better for PostgreSQL. Again, this is only a guess. MySQL does more stuff with threads while PostgreSQL switches process because each backend is a process. -- Bruce Momjian| http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 853-3000 + If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup.| Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Tim Barnard wrote: snip ...This is not the same in my book, since I don't care to run RHL in any kind of production environment... snip What is it about RHL that various people wouldn't recommend running it in a production envornment? I don't have a contrary view, so much as I'd like to know what's specifically wrong with the RH distribution. We're trying to decide on a distribution on which to develop telecom software, utilizing PostgreSQL of course :-) What other distributions would you recommend and why? Tim Now that they will unite the OS with the DB, I can't think of more suitable environment for the Sys/DB admin's paradise. That is, if they do indeed make significant changes to the operating system they are shipping in the RHDB. cheers, thalis ps. no, i don't personally use Rh. - Original Message - From: Alex Knight [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Vivek Khera [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 12:35 PM Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL On 27 Jun 2001, Vivek Khera wrote: BM == Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: BM Here is a press release stating Red Hat will offer commercial support BM for PostgreSQL: BM http://www.redhat.com/about/presscenter/2001/press_database.html My read is that they're supporting their integrated OS+DB package, not PostgreSQL directly. This is not the same in my book, since I don't care to run RHL in any kind of production environment. Agreed over here. -knight ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
...This is not the same in my book, since I don't care to run RHL in any kind of production environment... snip What is it about RHL that various people wouldn't recommend running it in a production envornment? I don't have a contrary view, so much as I'd like to know what's specifically wrong with the RH distribution. We're trying to decide on a distribution on which to develop telecom software, utilizing PostgreSQL of course :-) What other distributions would you recommend and why? Here's my take on it, it may or may not reflect reality. : ) RH didn't get where they are by being the best, they got there by being the most sellable. Early on, they grabbed a large market share by making a few very sellable decisions, and now, the fact that they are so large now gives them momentum that keeps them afloat - oddly enough, just like Microsoft. : ) Because they're large, they garner support in terms of drivers and programming, and that, in turn, makes them more attractive to potential users. Their products aren't necessarily bad, at least not all of them. Historically, the .0 releases are buggy and flakey, the .1's are better, and the .2's are decent. Now that, of course, depends on your own definitions of such qualitative terms as buggy and decent, but according to my definitions and experience, that's been about right. For my needs, they're also becoming extremely bloated. I don't need three CD's worth of installation crap to get Apache, SSH, and PostgreSQL running. : ) I also don't like depending on precompiled packages, for a couple of reasons - including the fact that it's hard to choose compile-time settings on pre-compiled binaries. : ) So, I've started working on putting together a sort of mini-distro with only what my servers will need. It's quite a bit easier than I thought it would be, and lets me mix and match the features that I want, such as XFS support and what-not. Now, since I've been so negative about them, I'll also be positive - RedHat isn't bad for production use. Stay with .2 releases, and things will likely be just fine for you. There are some policy decisions that (IMHO) aren't as good as they could be, but those can generally be fixed with a few minor modifications to startup scripts and configuration files. As long as you tighten down the security holes in the default installation, most people would likely be just fine using RedHat on their production machines. steve ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
Alex Knight [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Lamar Owen wrote: On Wednesday 27 June 2001 16:15, Alex Knight wrote: On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Lamar Owen wrote: Disagreed over here, with 4+ years of experience 24x7 on RHL since RHL 4.1. This 4+ years 24/7 experience isn't on that server you said was for internal purposes with low load you mentioned in a previous post, is it? No. This one has been streaming our RealAudio stream 24x7 since May 1, 1997 (minus a few hours for maintenance -- you know, things like replacing failed power supplies, replacing/installing hard drives, upgradingthe OS, etc. Still running the same Super Micro dual PPro 200 motherboard -- but 192MB now instead of the 64MB we started with. ECC, of course. Will be replacing with the 'lightly loaded' PIII-600 w/ 1GB as soon as Real Networks supports kernel 2.4.) -- along with mail, DNS, and seven domains worth of webservice. Not terribly heavy loaded -- but we can and do saturate our T1. Even though it may appear that your server is doing a lot, it's not facing the load of a highly scaled enterprise level e-commerce site, where RedHat just doesn't cut it. That claim is bogus. Red Hat Linux is the number one linux by far in enterprise deployments. -- Trond Eivind Glomsrød Red Hat, Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
Wow, I didn't realize I was going to open such a big can of worms :-) Thanks to everyone for putting in their "two-cents worth." All of the responses have definitely been helpful. And I agree with Adam, et al, this really doesn't belong on this list so lets end this thread and move on. Thanks again. Tim - Original Message -From: "Tim Barnard" tbarnard@povn.comTo: [EMAIL PROTECTED]Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQLOn 27 Jun 2001,Tim Barnardwrote:snip...This is not the same in my book, since I don't careto run RHL in any kind of production environment...snipWhat is it about RHL that various people wouldn'trecommend running it in a production envornment?I don't have a contrary view, so much as I'd like toknow what's specifically wrong with the RH distribution.We're trying to decide on a distribution on which todevelop telecom software, utilizing PostgreSQL ofcourse :-) What other distributions would yourecommend and why?Tim
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
Alex Knight [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: 1) Distribution of Linux to have the largest number of out of the box security holes. Check back and look at the security reports. Count them if you insist. And check for the number of them being Red Hat specific. 2) Most commercial software made _for_ RedHat (some companies only support RedHat) insist that you use RPM to install their software, otherwise you are SOL. Most commercial software made _for_ _Linux_ supports all distributions. That depends very much on the level of support you're giving - for a big, complex you want to support as few environments as possible. You can use it other places, but won't be supported to the same degree. 3) So much extra crap running to begin with, eating up extra memory, cpu, etc. You're obviously unfamiliar with it. I'm sure we could go on, but this isn't a Linux list :) Agreed. And of course, it isn't very interesting to discuss with someone who is unfamiliar with the product. -- Trond Eivind Glomsrød Red Hat, Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
On Wed, Jun 27, 2001 at 05:03:33PM -0400, Lamar Owen wrote: : I think most people that say they'd not run RHL either simply don't like : Linux or just don't like Red Hat. Nothing different in this than the : attitude of MySQL users who just simply don't like PostgreSQL. Or they've : heard that Postgres95 1.01 was a dog, so they won't use PostgreSQL 7.1.2. : The same comparison holds for Red Hat -- the number of possible reasons to : not use it in a production, 24x7, high-load environment are shrinking with : every release. Well, to defend some of those people, we're writing a very database intensive app that's attempting to be SQL agnostic. For the most part it works with MySQL and Postgres both (one or two minor hacks in the database abstraction layer to support features that are just *too* different to code around). When we run this system under Solaris x86, MySQL kicks the pants off Postgres using the same data. When we switched that over to an identical box running Linux (it's RH7.1, but really, it's the kernel and underlying system that matter), Postgres runs much better than both the Solaris MySQL and Postgres installs with the same data and code. I had almost given up on using Postgres for this system because under Solaris, it just couldn't cut it (MySQL could do the work with one CPU while Postgres took up even more CPU and required *both* CPUs to be enabled), but when we moved the system to a Linux box, things worked much better. Go figure. I'm sure that many people's attitudes about RH are the same way. Older versions of RedHat just felt really bloated and slow. RH7.1 feels much tighter, but if I had been turned off by older versions, I never would've tried it. * Philip Molter * DataFoundry.net * http://www.datafoundry.net/ * [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
Previous to version 7.1, RHL wasn't very secure by default. This is one of the most common complaints I hear. 7.1 can be made quite secure out of the box without any special config -- just leave the firewall config at the default of 'HIGH' -- of course, I've now heard complaints that it is then 'too secure' :-). Myself, I'd prefer that they'd just leave the insecure services off by default, rather than using a firewall as a band-aid. ; ) steve ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
Even though it may appear that your server is doing a lot, it's not facing the load of a highly scaled enterprise level e-commerce site, where RedHat just doesn't cut it. That claim is bogus. Red Hat Linux is the number one linux by far in enterprise deployments. Well, Microsoft has an even greater installed base in enterprise deployments, so NT must be better than Linux Being #1 doesn't make you the best. steve ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl
RE: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
As long as it's a robust, managable, and open arhcitecture, I'm generally agnostic as to technoliogies. That said, my red hat experience: ran multiple java application servers and multiple oracle 8i db instances on red hat 6.n (medium size 100-200 tables) with a moderately high computationally and datbase intensive application. consistently ran 6 9's uptime (what little downtime there was generally due to pilot error or buggy code) these servers served from 10-to-25 thousand users daily. we ran many months 100% uptime. tjm -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Alex Knight Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 1:46 PM To: Lamar Owen Cc: Vivek Khera; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Lamar Owen wrote: On Wednesday 27 June 2001 16:15, Alex Knight wrote: On Wed, 27 Jun 2001, Lamar Owen wrote: Disagreed over here, with 4+ years of experience 24x7 on RHL since RHL 4.1. This 4+ years 24/7 experience isn't on that server you said was for internal purposes with low load you mentioned in a previous post, is it? No. This one has been streaming our RealAudio stream 24x7 since May 1, 1997 (minus a few hours for maintenance -- you know, things like replacing failed power supplies, replacing/installing hard drives, upgradingthe OS, etc. Still running the same Super Micro dual PPro 200 motherboard -- but 192MB now instead of the 64MB we started with. ECC, of course. Will be replacing with the 'lightly loaded' PIII-600 w/ 1GB as soon as Real Networks supports kernel 2.4.) -- along with mail, DNS, and seven domains worth of webservice. Not terribly heavy loaded -- but we can and do saturate our T1. Even though it may appear that your server is doing a lot, it's not facing the load of a highly scaled enterprise level e-commerce site, where RedHat just doesn't cut it. I have a T1 to my house, and I saturate it all the time... without load :) -Knight ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 3: if posting/reading through Usenet, please send an appropriate subscribe-nomail command to [EMAIL PROTECTED] so that your message can get through to the mailing list cleanly
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
1) Distribution of Linux to have the largest number of out of the box security holes. Check back and look at the security reports. Count them if you insist. And check for the number of them being Red Hat specific. I consider things like the portmapper being enabled by default Red Hat specific. 3) So much extra crap running to begin with, eating up extra memory, cpu, etc. You're obviously unfamiliar with it. I don't know, I generaly turn off at least half of the services that are enabled by default, which free up quite a bit of memory. steve ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 5: Have you checked our extensive FAQ? http://www.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/faq.html
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
Bruce Momjian [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Even though it may appear that your server is doing a lot, it's not facing the load of a highly scaled enterprise level e-commerce site, where RedHat just doesn't cut it. That claim is bogus. Red Hat Linux is the number one linux by far in enterprise deployments. And MS has more enterprise deployments than RH. Does that make MS better than RH? No, but they aren't a toy either - while they are closed source, and trying to force you to their world as much as possible and restricting freedom (like upgrading your machine when running XP) and a monopolist blatantly using their force in the desktop market to increase adoption of new products (hailstorm, IE, original NT server etc), NT isn't just a toy anymore. All I'm pointing out is that Red Hat Linux does cut in at enterprise level e-commerce cites (we're powering a few of those) - some may not like the product, more don't like Red Hat, but Red Hat Linux is a good and valid alternative. Whether is right for you, depend on your needs, sum you're willing to spend (few things beat Sun Starfire :) and the expertise you have or can build up. -- Trond Eivind Glomsrød Red Hat, Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
None of them. Run FreeBSD. It's better. Or, it will be, once the SMP code is improved. : ) steve ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl
RE: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
To all who are fanning the flames -- this is not the place for prolonged discussion on operating systems (nor sarcasm and zealous diatribes), is it? -- please take it offline (please?) thanks in advance tjm Imensis laboribus comparatur emditio: ac post moriendum est. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Bruce Momjian Sent: Wednesday, June 27, 2001 3:28 PM To: Trond Eivind Glomsrod Cc: Alex Knight; Lamar Owen; Vivek Khera; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL Even though it may appear that your server is doing a lot, it's not facing the load of a highly scaled enterprise level e-commerce site, where RedHat just doesn't cut it. That claim is bogus. Red Hat Linux is the number one linux by far in enterprise deployments. And MS has more enterprise deployments than RH. Does that make MS better than RH? -- Bruce Momjian| http://candle.pha.pa.us [EMAIL PROTECTED] | (610) 853-3000 + If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup.| Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania 19026 ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives? http://www.postgresql.org/search.mpl ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
Steve Wolfe [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Previous to version 7.1, RHL wasn't very secure by default. This is one of the most common complaints I hear. 7.1 can be made quite secure out of the box without any special config -- just leave the firewall config at the default of 'HIGH' -- of course, I've now heard complaints that it is then 'too secure' :-). Myself, I'd prefer that they'd just leave the insecure services off by default, rather than using a firewall as a band-aid. ; ) ALmost all services are off as well. Openssh is on, sendmail is on (but only accepts connects from the local machine), portmap is on and that's about it. -- Trond Eivind Glomsrød Red Hat, Inc. ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 2: you can get off all lists at once with the unregister command (send unregister YourEmailAddressHere to [EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: [GENERAL] Re: Red Hat to support PostgreSQL
On Wed, Jun 27, 2001 at 06:58:18PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote: : My guess on this one is that Solaris is slower for PostgreSQL because : process switching is _much_ heavier on Solaris than other OS's. This is : because of the way they implemented processes in SVr4. They got quite : heavy, almost requiring kernel threads so you weren't switching : processes all the time. : : In a sense threads were a solution to a process bloating problem. : Linux/BSD have much lighter processes and hence work better for : PostgreSQL. Again, this is only a guess. : : MySQL does more stuff with threads while PostgreSQL switches process : because each backend is a process. Does more stuff with threads? It does all stuff with threads. Your guess was our guess, which is why we tried shoving the thing over to a Linux box. Now if I only I could figure out why kernel CPU usage keeps going up incrementally over time (went from roughly a 5% average to a 16% average in two days) the more we run the system. All signs are pointing to postgres. VACUUM ANALYZE-ing the tables used to reduce it back down, but now, it doesn't appear to be as effective (might go from 16% back down to 13%). Anyone know what causes that, and better yet, anyone know how to fix it? We see similar behavior under Solaris. * Philip Molter * DataFoundry.net * http://www.datafoundry.net/ * [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---(end of broadcast)--- TIP 1: subscribe and unsubscribe commands go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
