On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 10:49:01AM -0400, Rod Taylor wrote: > > In my opinion the defaults should be set up for a typical database > > server machine. > > Ok.. thats fair. The first problem would be to define typical for > current PostgreSQL installations, and typical for non-postgresql > installations (the folks we want to convert).
It's been a while since the last one of these discussions, so stop me if this has been suggested before, but... Do we actually want to have a default configuration file? Seriously, if we provide, say, 4 or 5 files based on various system assumptions (conf.MINIMAL, conf.AVERAGE, conf.MULTIDISK, or whatever), then we might be able to get away with not providing an actual default. Change the installation instructions to say >>> PostgreSQL requires a configuration file, which it expects to be located in $DIR. Provided are several example configurations (in $DIR/eg/). If you're just starting with PostrgreSQL, we recommend reading through those and selecting one which most closely matches your machine. If you're in doubt as to which file to use, try $AVERAGE. If you're still having difficulty getting PostgreSQL to run, try $MINIMAL. $MINIMAL should work on every supported platform, but is not optimized for modern hardware -- PostgreSQL will not run well in this configuration. <<< This makes the installation process slightly less simple, but only in the way that we want it to be. That is, it forces the end user to the realization that there actually is configuration to be done, and forces them into a minimally interactive way to deal with it. It also doesn't require any kernel-test coding, or really any development at all, so we should theoretically be able to get it finished and ready to go more quickly. Thoughts? -johnnnnnnnnnnn ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match