Irix 6.2, Postgres 7.3.1, some brokenness

I've got a 6-way SGI Challenge L with R4400/200 cpu's in it, and a gig
of interleaved ram. I am running postgres 7.3.1, which I compiled
64-bit with MIPSPro. The database is living on an ultrawide scsi raid.
I am also running postgres on a 2-cpu (85mhz) Sparc 20 with 384mb of
ram, and the database lives on a 10krpm single narrow disk.

I'm finding that the Sparc 20 is about twice as fast as the Challenge.
Postgres on the '20 was compiled 32-bit (of course) with gcc 3.2.

When I am testing the machines, I have run tests with 1 db handle, with
2 db handles, and with 2 vs 6 handles. Consistently, the 20 is faster
than the Challenge. I suspect something is going wrong here on mips.

I have tried, without any luck, to get postgres compiled with gcc 3.2
(from freeware.sgi.com). It keeps adding '-r' when its linking, even
when LDFLAGS is unset, LD is 'gcc' and CC is 'gcc'. I could do the
linking manually, but this is not really a viable option for a release.

Additionally, postgres does *not* trap divide-by-zero errors, as
Solaris and Linux do. 'select 1/0' causes the backend to crash.

elvis=# select 1/0;
server closed the connection unexpectedly
This probably means the server terminated abnormally
before or while processing the request.
The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: WARNING:
Message from PostgreSQL backend:
The Postmaster has informed me that some other backend
died abnormally and possibly corrupted shared memory.
I have rolled back the current transaction and am
going to terminate your database system connection and exit.
Please reconnect to the database system and repeat your query.
Failed.
!#

Justin tells me there is a release imminent, and that I should mention
this ASAP. Neil suggested I try with gcc, but as I said, I've been
unable to get it to compile with gcc.

Also, I understand (but can confirm on monday) that Oracle has dropped
support for Irix entirely. This would make postgres the *only* database
for SGI MIPS, and I'd really like to see it better supported. SGI
machines are awesome for database servers.

Anyone needing a shell on the machine can feel free to ask.

Alex

--
alex avriette
$^X is my programming language of choice.
alex(at)posixnap(dot)net