Re: pg_config, pg_service.conf, postgresql.conf ....

After takin a swig o' Arrakan spice grog, pgsql(at)mohawksoft(dot)com ("Mark Woodward") belched out:
>> Mark Woodward wrote:
> Like I have repeated a number of times, sometimes, there is more than one
> database cluster on a machine. The proposed pg_clusters.conf, could look
> like this:
>
> pg_clusters.conf>>>>
> [GEO]
> DATADIR=/vol01/pggeo
> PORT=5435
>
> [ICDMDB]
> DATADIR=/vol01/pgicdmdb
> PORT=5434
>
> [TOMLANE]
> DATADIR=/vol03/pg74
> PORT=5433
> POSTMASTER=/usr/local/pg7.4.1/bin/postmaster
>
> [POSTMASTER]
> DATADIR=/vol02/pg90
> PORT=5432
>
> # Virtual target starts all?
> [ALL]
> DB0=GEO
> DB1=ICDMDB
> DB2=TOMLANE
>
> <<<<<<<<<
>
> pg_ctl start
> (Finds and starts the "POSTMASTER" entry)
>
> pg_ctl -S ICDMDB start
> (Starts the ICDMDB cluster)
>
> pg_ctl startall
> or
> pg_ctl -S [*|all] start
> or
> pg_ctl startall
>
>
> Or maybe even "start" will start a virtual target "ALL"

I can point at three things there that are distinctly wrong.

- PORT should *never* be specified in that file, because it is already
specified in each respective postgresql.conf file.

- POSTMASTER is the wrong thing to point to; you should be pointing to
a path, instead, and it must ALWAYS be specified.

- You provide no indication of where log files are to be stowed.
In version 8, there are options for that to be specified in the
postgresql.conf file, but not so, for earlier versions...

I'm not keen on the Windows .ini file style sectioning; that makes it
look like a mix between a shell script and something else. It should
be one or the other. It probably should be directly executable by
something...

But having some central "registry" that consists of data directories
and binary directories (and possibly log directories) seems reasonably
elegant.
--
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