Re: [GENERAL] Scalability to very large databases under Linux

M Simms wrote on Tue, 15 Jun 1999 19:58:28 BST
>> Dear Folks,
>>
>> We have been running 6.4.2 under Linux on a dual Xeon box
>> with mostly good success. Our current dataset is 20 million records
>> of mostly numerical data (56 fields of floats [70%], ints [20%] and
>> a few text fields [10%]). The performance is acceptable, the only
>> problem so far has been the difficultly in floating type promotion
>> "confusing" the optimizer.
>>
>> Our database is about to expans to 150 million records. Given
>> sufficient diskspace (e.g. a larger RAID array) will postgres
>> perform on this volume? Are there any gotchas? General comments
>> from people with experience with databases of this volume under
>> postgres?
>
>The only problem I could see immediately is that the Linux ext2 filesystem has
>a 2GB limit on any one file. Postgresql has functionality to get round that (a
>s
>was discussed a few months ago on the list) but it apparently causes problems
>in some instances. I suggest you look through the archives for this one.
>
>

There is one I know about, which was a fencepost-type bug with
the addressing in Linux. There was a patch posted in "hackers"
which I had to apply to get this to work in 6.4.2. Our current
database already exceeds the 2Gb limit.

--Martin