Re: Best OS for Postgres 8.2

On Tue, 2007-05-08 at 23:31 -0400, Greg Smith wrote:
>
> My issue wasn't with the idea, it was with the implementation. When I
> have my newbie hat on, it adds a layer of complexity that isn't needed for
> simple installs.

I find it very hard to agree with that.

As a newbie I install postgresql and have a database server installed,
and operating. The fact that the DB files are installed somewhere
like /var/lib/postgresql/8.1/main is waaay beyond newbie.

At that point I can "createdb" or "createuser", but I _do_ _not_ need to
know anything about the cluster stuff until there is more than one DB on
the machine.

The Debian wrappers all default appropriately for the single-cluster
case, so having a single cluster has added _no_ perceivable complexity
for a newbie (as it should).

If you have a second cluster, whether it's the same Pg version or not,
things necessarily start to get complicated. OTOH I haven't had any
problem explaining to people that the --cluster option applies, and
there are sane ways to make that default to a reasonable thing as well.

All in all I think that the Debian scripts are excellent. I'm sure
there are improvements that could be made, but overall they don't get in
the way, they do the right thing in the minimal case, and they give the
advanced user a lot more choices about multiple DB instances on the same
machine.

Cheers,
Andrew McMillan.

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