Re: PGDATA / data_directory

On Sun, 4 Sep 2016 11:40:38 +0200
Christoph Berg <myon(at)debian(dot)org> wrote:

> Re: Benoit Lobréau 2016-08-31
> <CAPE8EZ6ToyA=MMzL7Z-dyhhXhrtuAOgOd6we=cxjhTNd7JdiWA(at)mail(dot)gmail(dot)com>
> > Hi,
> >
> > My company is using PGDATA to store configuration files and the guc
> > data_directory to give the path to the instance directory.
> >
> > They would use it like this:
> >
> > pg_ctl start -D <path to CONFDIR> -w
> >
> > with this directory setup:
> >
> > <somepath>/CONFDIR => postgresql.conf pg_hba.conf pg_ident.conf
> > <somepath>/SYSTEM => All the normal stuff in the postgres instance
> > directory + recovery.conf recovery.done etc...
> >
> > Is it commonly used ?
>
> That's the default cluster layout on Debian (and Debian-based
> distributions).
>
> /etc/postgresql/9.5/main/
> /var/lib/postgresql/9.5/main/
> /var/run/postgresql/9.5-main.pg_stat_tmp/

Indeed. I never noticed data_directory was set in postgresql.conf file...

But then, why starting PostgreSQL with the following command ?

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin/postgres -D /var/lib/postgresql/9.4/main \
-c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.4/main/postgresql.conf

It seems the following one work as expected and seems more logical with this
setup:

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin/postgres -D /etc/postgresql/9.4/main/

--
Jehan-Guillaume de Rorthais