Re: Soft Updates/FFS and Postgresql

Ola

On Fri, 7 Feb 2003, Edmund Dengler wrote:

> Tried searching the web for the answer to this, no real luck. I was
> wondering what the current filesystem people would recommend for
> Postgresql on an OpenBSD box? I assume it would be FFS, but would the
> community agree or disagree on the use of Soft Updates as well? My
> belief is that the Soft Updates option is not a good choice due to
> the possibility of corrupting the database on a crash. However, I cannot
> find a discussion of this with respect to databases one way or the other.

I guess it's almost as safe as without softdeps. See
http://mirror.netbsd.com.br/Documentation/misc/#ffs-integ. I'd use
a FFS/Softdep FS than ext2 with it's default setup. If you don't trash
your filesystem, Postgres has WAL to keep your data safe, hopefully. :)

> As a side issue, what is the consensus regarding the best open-source
> operating system to use for a strictly database server running Postgresql?
> Are Linux/FreeBSD/OpenBSD/etc all reasonably close to one another, or
> are there configurations that really fly when dealing with large
> databases with lots of inserts/selects?

Most people prefer to use linux. I run pgsql servers with Linux,
FreeBSD and NetBSD. I can't say which is faster.
If I can suggest you something, take a look at NetBSD's LFS. Very
promising filesystem, however, It's still experimental. Might be a very
good choice soon.

[]s
Ricardo.