Many postmasters...

Hi everyone,

Using Linux RH7.0 with correct gcc and glibc, PG7.03, Apache 1.3.14
and PHP4. We have several unresolved questions :

* Is it normal that
ps aux |grep postgres
shows (what we want : processes own by postgres) multiple postgres
backends (which seems normal to me) *AND* multiple postmaster (same
full cmd line).
Sometimes we also have "defunct" postgresses.

* we start postgres with a /etc/rc.d/init.d script that launches
pg_ctl -w <many options here> start
When invoked from the shell, this command never returns to the shell
by itself, we have to press <enter>. This behaviour prevents the
script for terminating properly. Is there a way around this ?
Not tried echo | pg_ctl .... yet

* every backend created by an Apache session opens many files (in our
case, about 80 including the indexes) and many backends will finally
generate an "Too many files open" message. We first increased the
/proc/sys/fs/file-max to 8192 but that's a lot !

The apache/php server always uses the same connect parameters for
every page but it seems php's pg_pconnect() behaves just like
pg_connect. Shouldn't we have apache hold a few backends connected ?

Thanks for you attention and help.

--
Jean-Christophe Boggio
cat(at)thefreecat(dot)org
Independant Consultant and Developer
Delphi, Linux, Oracle, Perl