Forgive me if this is a many-times rehashed topic. I¹m very new to postgresql, most of my background is in Oracle.
Running postgres 8.2.5 with one master and three slaves (using slony) For an upcoming release there is a 16 million row insert that on our test cluster takes about 2.5 hours to complete with all indices dropped beforehand. If I turn off fsync, it completes in under 10 minutes. Other than the protection that fsync will allow me should there be a crash in the middle of such a process, my thinking was to turn off fsync for this part of the release, get the insert done, then restart fsync once the insert is complete. Am I opening myself up to any dangers that aren¹t obvious by doing this? Any advice to the contrary? And of course, if I am out of my mind for doing this, please let me know. Thanks in advance Aaron
