Re: PostgreSQL for VAX on NetBSD/OpenBSD

On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 10:16 PM, John Klos <john(at)ziaspace(dot)com> wrote:
>> Has anyone tried to build PostgreSQL for VAX lately? If so, did it
>> compile? Did you have to use --disable-spinlocks to get it to compile? If
>> it did compile, can you actually run it, and does it pass the regression
>> tests and work as expected? Would you be willing to work with the
>> PostgreSQL to ensure continuing support for this platform, or does that seem
>> not worthwhile for whatever reason?
>
> I've compiled postgresql93-client and postgresql93-server from pkgsrc on a
> VAX running NetBSD 6.1.4. The initial launch didn't like the default stack
> limit:
>
> /etc/rc.d/pgsql start
> Initializing PostgreSQL databases.
> LOG: invalid value for parameter "max_stack_depth": 100
> DETAIL: "max_stack_depth" must not exceed 0kB.
> HINT: Increase the platform's stack depth limit via "ulimit -s" or local
> equivalent.
> FATAL: failed to initialize max_stack_depth to 100
> child process exited with exit code 1
> initdb: removing data directory "/usr/local/pgsql/data"
> pg_ctl: database system initialization failed
>
> I unlimited and tried again. The pgsql process showed it was using 146
> megabytes of memory while initializing, then got as far as:
>
> /etc/rc.d/pgsql start
> Initializing PostgreSQL databases.

What value did it select for shared_buffers? How much memory does a
high-end VAX have? These days, we try to set shared_buffers = 128MB
if the platform will support it, but it's supposed to fall back to
smaller values if that doesn't work. It will try allocating that much
though, at least for a moment, to see whether it can.

--
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company