Re: why is the db so slow?

replying to Becky and Josh's reply.....

> It sounds to me like the system has something wrong with it if "pwd"
> takes a while to respond. Even if CPU isn't in heavy use, I'd guess
> some other process is eating RAM or disk I/O

Look into the unix command 'top'. It lists processes and the amount of
resources they are using. Although if it's another user using them it may
not detail them.... but I think you can get some idea of what other users
are up to from the CPU idle time and server load averages from the 'top'
display.

> However, if this is for school, PostgreSQL is not very efficient being
> run as a seperate installation for each user. For multiuser
> installations, it is far better to have one installation and many
> databases with restricted permissions.

I can attest to that, I run a web site using virtual hosting (about 80
users, each with their own version of Apache (and in my case, my own
version of postgreSQL, I have no idea what the other users are running).
My development Linux laptop is 5 to 10 times faster than the web site, of
course, I'm it's ONLY user.

brew