Re: PostgreSQL for VAX on NetBSD/OpenBSD

Last I checked, NetBSD doesn't support any sort of multiprocessor VAX.
Multiprocessor VAXes exist, but you're stuck with either Ultrix or VMS on
them.

Pat

On Sun, Jun 29, 2014 at 2:06 PM, Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> Dave McGuire <mcguire(at)neurotica(dot)com> writes:
> > On 06/29/2014 10:54 AM, Andres Freund wrote:
> >> Maybe I'm just not playful enough, but keeping a platform alive so we
> >> can run postgres in simulator seems a bit, well, pointless.
>
> > On the "in a simulator" matter: It's important to keep in mind that
> > there are more VAXen out there than just simulated ones. I'm offering
> > up a simulated one here because I can spin it up in a dedicated VM on a
> > VMware host that's already running and I already have power budget for.
> > I could just as easily run it on real hardware...there are, at last
> > count, close to forty real-iron VAXen here, but only a few of those are
> > running 24/7. I'd happily bring up another one to do Postgres builds
> > and testing, if someone will send me the bucks to pay for the additional
> > power and cooling. (that is a real offer)
>
> Well, the issue from our point of view is that a lot of what we care about
> testing is extremely low-level hardware behavior, like whether spinlocks
> work as expected across processors. It's not clear that a simulator would
> provide a sufficiently accurate emulation.
>
> OTOH, the really nasty issues like cache coherency rules don't arise in
> single-processor systems. So unless you have a multiprocessor VAX
> available to spin up, a simulator may tell us as much as we'd learn
> anyway.
>
> (If you have got one, maybe some cash could be found --- we do have
> project funds available, and I think they'd be well spent on testing
> purposes. I don't make those decisions though.)
>
> regards, tom lane
>
>