Re: Best Linux Distribution

I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution like:

whitebox
RHEL
Fedora
Suse

Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an answer

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Hi,

On Sat, 8 Jan 2005, Esteban Kemp wrote:

> I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution like:
>
> whitebox
> RHEL

RHEL is not free (of charge).

> Fedora
> Suse

SLES is again not free of charge.

> Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an answer

All have PostgreSQL included within the distribution.

IMHO, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (Or WBEL, its clone...) is the best among
these... Red Hat also has an application server which has Tomcat
installed, AFAIR.

Regards,
- --
Devrim GUNDUZ
devrim~gunduz.org, devrim~PostgreSQL.org, devrim.gunduz~linux.org.tr
http://www.tdmsoft.com http://www.gunduz.org
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No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
or tune :)

Hope this helps,

On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 11:14:00AM -0300, Esteban Kemp wrote:
> I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and
> Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution
> like:
>
> whitebox
> RHEL
> Fedora
> Suse
>
> Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an answer
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> Patent. n. Genius is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. A patent is a
> tool for doing 5% of the work and then sitting around waiting for someone
> else to do the other 95% so you can sue them.

Devrim GUNDUZ wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, 8 Jan 2005, Esteban Kemp wrote:
>
>> I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and
>> Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution like:
>>
>> whitebox
>> RHEL
>
>
> RHEL is not free (of charge).
>
>> Fedora
>> Suse
>
>
> SLES is again not free of charge.

You can download a variation of SuSE 9.2 pro now. I say a variation
because it's a dvd iso which is around 4g, whereas the dvd that comes
with the boxed 9.2 pro is a dual-layer and +7g.

I don't know what the differences are between the two.

--
Until later, Geoffrey

You should look www.linuxiso.org.
There you may find the ISO of a great variety of distros.

C ya,
Bruno Almeida do Lago

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Geoffrey
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 1:01 PM
To: pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Best Linux Distribution

Devrim GUNDUZ wrote:
> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
> Hi,
>
> On Sat, 8 Jan 2005, Esteban Kemp wrote:
>
>> I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and
>> Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution like:
>>
>> whitebox
>> RHEL
>
>
> RHEL is not free (of charge).
>
>> Fedora
>> Suse
>
>
> SLES is again not free of charge.

You can download a variation of SuSE 9.2 pro now. I say a variation
because it's a dvd iso which is around 4g, whereas the dvd that comes
with the boxed 9.2 pro is a dual-layer and +7g.

I don't know what the differences are between the two.

--
Until later, Geoffrey

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Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

>No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
>distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
>point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
>or tune :)
>
>
Actually there is a difference from PostgreSQL's point of view :)
Namely in filesystems. The default filesystem on whitebox, RHEL and
Fedora is EXT3 which really isn't that great.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>Hope this helps,
>
>On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 11:14:00AM -0300, Esteban Kemp wrote:
>
>
>>I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and
>>Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution
>>like:
>>
>>whitebox
>>RHEL
>>Fedora
>>Suse
>>
>>Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an answer
>>
>>

--
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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
>
>> No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
>> distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
>> point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
>> or tune :)
>>
>>
> Actually there is a difference from PostgreSQL's point of view :)
> Namely in filesystems. The default filesystem on whitebox, RHEL and
> Fedora is EXT3 which really isn't that great.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joshua D. Drake

Out of curiousity, which fs would you recommend for a ~terabyte oltp db?

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On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:03:31 -0800, Joshua D. Drake
<jd(at)www(dot)commandprompt(dot)com> wrote:
> Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
>
> >No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
> >distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
> >point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
> >or tune :)
> >
> >
> Actually there is a difference from PostgreSQL's point of view :)
> Namely in filesystems. The default filesystem on whitebox, RHEL and
> Fedora is EXT3 which really isn't that great.

On whitebox & RHEL ext3 is really the only choice. However, FC3
provides all the other major filesystems as choices (XFS, reiser).

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman netllama(at)gmail(dot)com
LlamaLand http://netllama.linux-sxs.org

When I had customers faced with this decision, we made the
recommendation based on which distro employs major contributors
of the software project in question.

For Postgresql's case, RedHat's employment of Tom made
our recommendation to use Red Hat.

Some of our clients are running .NET front ends, so we're
recommending Novel/SuSE for those.

It's a mix of superstition that the vendors platform is
may see earlier testing, along with rewarding the vendor
for supporting the project.

Ron

PS: All you open source vendors who employ important
developers -- Thank You - this contribution does not go unnoticed.

Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
> distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
> point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
> or tune :)
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 11:14:00AM -0300, Esteban Kemp wrote:
>
>>I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and
>>Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution
>>like:
>>
>>whitebox
>>RHEL
>>Fedora
>>Suse
>>
>>Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an answer

On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 09:19:33 -0800, Bricklen Anderson
<BAnderson(at)presinet(dot)com> wrote:
> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> >
> >> No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
> >> distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
> >> point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
> >> or tune :)
> >>
> >>
> > Actually there is a difference from PostgreSQL's point of view :)
> > Namely in filesystems. The default filesystem on whitebox, RHEL and
> > Fedora is EXT3 which really isn't that great.
> >
> > Sincerely,
> >
> > Joshua D. Drake
>
> Out of curiousity, which fs would you recommend for a ~terabyte oltp db?

XFS without a doubt. XFS has excellent large file (and filesystem) support.

--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
L. Friedman netllama(at)gmail(dot)com
LlamaLand http://netllama.linux-sxs.org

>>>Sincerely,
>>>
>>>Joshua D. Drake
>>>
>>>
>>Out of curiousity, which fs would you recommend for a ~terabyte oltp db?
>>
>>
>
>XFS without a doubt. XFS has excellent large file (and filesystem) support.
>
>
I second the XFS statement.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
>
>

--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
+1-503-667-4564 - jd(at)commandprompt(dot)com - http://www.commandprompt.com
PostgreSQL Replicator -- production quality replication for PostgreSQL

I still opt for Slackware simplicity and stability. Nothing better than a
well configured Slackware box with XFS file system and PostgreSQL! =)

C Ya,
Bruno

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org
[mailto:pgsql-general-owner(at)postgresql(dot)org] On Behalf Of Ron Mayer
Sent: Wednesday, January 19, 2005 3:32 PM
To: Martijn van Oosterhout; pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Best Linux Distribution

When I had customers faced with this decision, we made the
recommendation based on which distro employs major contributors
of the software project in question.

For Postgresql's case, RedHat's employment of Tom made
our recommendation to use Red Hat.

Some of our clients are running .NET front ends, so we're
recommending Novel/SuSE for those.

It's a mix of superstition that the vendors platform is
may see earlier testing, along with rewarding the vendor
for supporting the project.

Ron

PS: All you open source vendors who employ important
developers -- Thank You - this contribution does not go unnoticed.

Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
> distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
> point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
> or tune :)
>
> Hope this helps,
>
> On Sat, Jan 08, 2005 at 11:14:00AM -0300, Esteban Kemp wrote:
>
>>I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and
>>Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution
>>like:
>>
>>whitebox
>>RHEL
>>Fedora
>>Suse
>>
>>Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an
answer

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On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

> Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
>
>> No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
>> distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
>> point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
>> or tune :)
>>
> Actually there is a difference from PostgreSQL's point of view :)
> Namely in filesystems. The default filesystem on whitebox, RHEL and
> Fedora is EXT3 which really isn't that great.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Is there any evidence of the above claim? I've seen a link to a l-k
bug report about ext3, but apparently it was totally unconfirmed
(and a single bug does not mean a FS is not good - I remember XFS
being hammered heavily before being accepted into Linux).

I'm using ext3 cause all other FSes are simple add-ons in linux.
All of them struggled a lot before being able to meet linux high
quality standards and being accepted into mainstream. Ext3 was there
from the start. Of course that doesn't mean it fits PostgreSQL needs
better than other FSes.

.TM.
--
____/ ____/ /
/ / / Marco Colombo
___/ ___ / / Technical Manager
/ / / ESI s.r.l.
_____/ _____/ _/ Colombo(at)ESI(dot)it

I think the filesystem you choose depends what you are looking for.
Ext3 is by far the most tested and most stable out the file systems
available. It is basically just ext2 with journalling stuck on top
(and a few other niceities). XFS may well be faster but is perhaps not
so well tested or as stable. My choise for stability would be ext3 and
for speed would be xfs.

As for the OS, it probably doesn't make much difference. My personal
choice though is gentoo. My reasons are.

1. The postgres server is compiled with optimised gcc flags.
2. Gentoo have many different versions of postgres available and is
easy to upgrade /change between versions. Looking at the versions
available now they have from
7.3.6 to 8.0. (8.0 is still marked as testing)

Regards,

Abdul-Wahid

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:34:31 +0100 (CET), Marco Colombo
<pgsql(at)esiway(dot)net> wrote:
> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
> > Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> >
> >> No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use whichever
> >> distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
> >> point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to maintain
> >> or tune :)
> >>
> > Actually there is a difference from PostgreSQL's point of view :)
> > Namely in filesystems. The default filesystem on whitebox, RHEL and
> > Fedora is EXT3 which really isn't that great.
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Is there any evidence of the above claim? I've seen a link to a l-k
> bug report about ext3, but apparently it was totally unconfirmed
> (and a single bug does not mean a FS is not good - I remember XFS
> being hammered heavily before being accepted into Linux).
>
> I'm using ext3 cause all other FSes are simple add-ons in linux.
> All of them struggled a lot before being able to meet linux high
> quality standards and being accepted into mainstream. Ext3 was there
> from the start. Of course that doesn't mean it fits PostgreSQL needs
> better than other FSes.
>
> .TM.
> --
> ____/ ____/ /
> / / / Marco Colombo
> ___/ ___ / / Technical Manager
> / / / ESI s.r.l.
> _____/ _____/ _/ Colombo(at)ESI(dot)it
>
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> joining column's datatypes do not match
>

Alle 10:09, giovedì 20 gennaio 2005, Bruno Almeida do Lago ha scritto:
> I still opt for Slackware simplicity and stability. Nothing better than a
> well configured Slackware box with XFS file system and PostgreSQL! =)
>
> C Ya,
> Bruno

For a generic use of postgresql, binary packages in any linux distribution
are good and reliable. In some cases, i.e. in a production context where you
have to optimize your postgresql, the ability of configuring and compiling
postgresql from sources is a must. This should make you use a more flexible
distribution like slackware and gentoo with which you can prepare your linux
box from scratch by compiling everything according to your needs (it isn't
enough to have a binary linux distribituion installed and only postgresql
compiled from sources).

Ciao
Vittorio

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I think you forget the origins of the XFS filesystem. XFS was
originally created for SGI's IRIX operating system, and specifically
designed for handling large files and filesystems at high speeds. It
is very fast, and quite well tested: it was in heavy use on IRIX
systems before ever having been made available for Linux.

Check it out here:

http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/

On Jan 20, 2005, at 7:23 AM, Abdul-Wahid Paterson wrote:

> I think the filesystem you choose depends what you are looking for.
> Ext3 is by far the most tested and most stable out the file systems
> available. It is basically just ext2 with journalling stuck on top
> (and a few other niceities). XFS may well be faster but is perhaps not
> so well tested or as stable. My choise for stability would be ext3 and
> for speed would be xfs.
>
> As for the OS, it probably doesn't make much difference. My personal
> choice though is gentoo. My reasons are.
>
> 1. The postgres server is compiled with optimised gcc flags.
> 2. Gentoo have many different versions of postgres available and is
> easy to upgrade /change between versions. Looking at the versions
> available now they have from
> 7.3.6 to 8.0. (8.0 is still marked as testing)
>
> Regards,
>
> Abdul-Wahid
>
>
>
> On Thu, 20 Jan 2005 11:34:31 +0100 (CET), Marco Colombo
> <pgsql(at)esiway(dot)net> wrote:
>> On Wed, 19 Jan 2005, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>
>>> Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
>>>
>>>> No difference whatsoever from PostgreSQL's point of view. Use
>>>> whichever
>>>> distribution is easiest for you to administer. After all, there's no
>>>> point installing Postgres on a machine you don't know how to
>>>> maintain
>>>> or tune :)
>>>>
>>> Actually there is a difference from PostgreSQL's point of view :)
>>> Namely in filesystems. The default filesystem on whitebox, RHEL and
>>> Fedora is EXT3 which really isn't that great.
>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>
>> Is there any evidence of the above claim? I've seen a link to a l-k
>> bug report about ext3, but apparently it was totally unconfirmed
>> (and a single bug does not mean a FS is not good - I remember XFS
>> being hammered heavily before being accepted into Linux).
>>
>> I'm using ext3 cause all other FSes are simple add-ons in linux.
>> All of them struggled a lot before being able to meet linux high
>> quality standards and being accepted into mainstream. Ext3 was there
>> from the start. Of course that doesn't mean it fits PostgreSQL needs
>> better than other FSes.
>>
>> .TM.
>> --
>> ____/ ____/ /
>> / / / Marco Colombo
>> ___/ ___ / / Technical Manager
>> / / / ESI s.r.l.
>> _____/ _____/ _/ Colombo(at)ESI(dot)it
>>
>> ---------------------------(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
>>
>
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 6: Have you searched our list archives?
>
> http://archives.postgresql.org
>
>
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> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> Is there any evidence of the above claim? I've seen a link to a l-k
> bug report about ext3, but apparently it was totally unconfirmed
> (and a single bug does not mean a FS is not good - I remember XFS
> being hammered heavily before being accepted into Linux).

EXT3 works. It is just dog slow and yes there is plenty of evidence
to EXT3s problems. Even from the author himself. Just review the kernel
threads and mailing lists. Note that a lot of the problem have been fixed.

>
> I'm using ext3 cause all other FSes are simple add-ons in linux.All of
> them struggled a lot before being able to meet linux high
> quality standards and being accepted into mainstream. Ext3 was there
> from the start. Of course that doesn't mean it fits PostgreSQL needs
> better than other FSes.

Well that isnt exactly true. EXT3 is a bolt on to EXT2 which was always
there. Reiser is also a long time kernel at least from 2.2. XFS is also
a long time Linux supporter and its inclusion into the main tree had
nothing to do with quality.

Just because something isn't in the main tree doesn't mean that the quality
is lacking. A lot of times it is just politics.

There is a reason that all major distributions supported XFS, Reiser and JFS
before RedHat and it has nothing to do with quality.

Sincerely,

Joshua D Drake

>
> .TM.

--
Command Prompt, Inc., home of Mammoth PostgreSQL - S/ODBC and S/JDBC
Postgresql support, programming shared hosting and dedicated hosting.
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Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> Well that isnt exactly true. EXT3 is a bolt on to EXT2 which was always
> there. Reiser is also a long time kernel at least from 2.2.

I remember first using reiser3 by patching early 2.4 kernels. IIRC,
reiser was not in linus tree until 2.4.7 or so (not sure which release)
and it went in after a great debate/controversy.

So I don't think reiser is available in 2.2.

> XFS is also
> a long time Linux supporter and its inclusion into the main tree had
> nothing to do with quality.

--
dave

Does it have to be linux? I've never had as much success with PostGresql on
linux as i have on FreeBSD 5.3

matt

Quoting David Garamond <lists(at)zara(dot)6(dot)isreserved(dot)com>:

> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> > Well that isnt exactly true. EXT3 is a bolt on to EXT2 which was always
> > there. Reiser is also a long time kernel at least from 2.2.
>
> I remember first using reiser3 by patching early 2.4 kernels. IIRC,
> reiser was not in linus tree until 2.4.7 or so (not sure which release)
> and it went in after a great debate/controversy.
>
> So I don't think reiser is available in 2.2.
>
> > XFS is also
> > a long time Linux supporter and its inclusion into the main tree had
> > nothing to do with quality.
>
> --
> dave
>
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>

David Garamond wrote:

> Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>
>> Well that isnt exactly true. EXT3 is a bolt on to EXT2 which was always
>> there. Reiser is also a long time kernel at least from 2.2.
>
>
> I remember first using reiser3 by patching early 2.4 kernels. IIRC,
> reiser was not in linus tree until 2.4.7 or so (not sure which
> release) and it went in after a great debate/controversy.
>
> So I don't think reiser is available in 2.2.

O.k. did some research and it appears that Reiser may have been
available as of 2.4.1:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReiserFS

Which was still along time ago :) and considering how borked the Linus
tree was in 2.4 until about 2.4.18 which was
18 months after release... I think still matches my not always a
technical reason comment in this thread ;)

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>
>> XFS is also
>> a long time Linux supporter and its inclusion into the main tree had
>> nothing to do with quality.
>
>
> --
> dave
>
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mstory(at)uchicago(dot)edu wrote:

>Does it have to be linux? I've never had as much success with PostGresql on
>linux as i have on FreeBSD 5.3
>
>
For XFS? I don't think you are going to have with FreeBSD and XFS.
If IIRC (some freebsd person please chime in) that is one thing
that Linux has over FreeBSD which is its filesystems support.

Sincerely,

Joshua D. Drake

>matt
>
>Quoting David Garamond <lists(at)zara(dot)6(dot)isreserved(dot)com>:
>
>
>
>>Joshua D. Drake wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Well that isnt exactly true. EXT3 is a bolt on to EXT2 which was always
>>>there. Reiser is also a long time kernel at least from 2.2.
>>>
>>>
>>I remember first using reiser3 by patching early 2.4 kernels. IIRC,
>>reiser was not in linus tree until 2.4.7 or so (not sure which release)
>>and it went in after a great debate/controversy.
>>
>>So I don't think reiser is available in 2.2.
>>
>>
>>
>>>XFS is also
>>>a long time Linux supporter and its inclusion into the main tree had
>>>nothing to do with quality.
>>>
>>>
>>--
>>dave
>>
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>>
>>
>>
>
>
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On Thursday 20 January 2005 09:20 pm, Joshua D. Drake wrote:
> mstory(at)uchicago(dot)edu wrote:
> >Does it have to be linux? I've never had as much success with
> > PostGresql on linux as i have on FreeBSD 5.3
>
> For XFS? I don't think you are going to have with FreeBSD and XFS.
> If IIRC (some freebsd person please chime in) that is one thing
> that Linux has over FreeBSD which is its filesystems support.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Joshua D. Drake

I don't think he was referring to the filesystem issue as much as the
original question as to which Linux distribution would be best.

I was running PostgreSQL on Linux until just before the 2.4 kernel was
released. I tried it on FreeBSD because my uncompressed backup files
were larger than 2GB. I've been running PostgreSQL on FreeBSD 4* ever
since; and I could not be more pleased. Although the 2.4 kernel
increased the maximum file size, I never looked back. (Actually, I
have been looking back at Linux -- but only at the request of the IS
Dept. They have a few staff that run Linux at home; but aren't
comfortable with FreeBSD. At the point that they support Linux
officially, they would like me to change operating systems.)

Andrew Gould

On Friday 21 January 2005 07:40, Andrew L. Gould wrote:

We are running a 200 user system off a SUN Fire v40z using SuSE Linux 9.2 for
AMD64.

On average we process a JSP page in 300 ms, country wide and have
approximately 300 tables with over 3 000 000 records in the PostgresQL DB.

I would recommend that you look at any Linux distro that supports 64 Bit
architecture... ...32 bit machines just don't cope so well. :)

Initially we running this off a Win 2000 server running MS-SQL but we could
only support 20 concurrent connections... ...if we were lucky.

I then converted the DB to PostgresQL and moved this to a Dual PIV running
Linux and managed to push the concurrent connections up to 50.

We now can support more then 300 concurrent connections and the server keeps
smiling.

The machine is a quad processor with 8GB of RAM which does not really compare
with the PIV as it is in a league of its own, but if you look at the query
response and page response on a case-by-case basis, you will see that the 64
bit architecture is normally 2 to 3 times faster then a 32 bit machine.

Q
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Schickele

--On Saturday, January 08, 2005 11:14 AM -0300 Esteban Kemp
<ekemp(at)inf(dot)uach(dot)cl> wrote:

>
> I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and Tomcat,
> And I have to choose between some free linux distribution like:
>
> whitebox
> RHEL
> Fedora
> Suse
>
> Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an
> answer

Have you considered something other than linux? Try FreeBSD. I think one
of FreeBSD's active developers is also a PostgreSQL developer. (Fournier
IIRC) FreeBSD is great software and it shares the BSD license with
PostgreSQL.

Later,
Jason C. Wells

Esteban Kemp wrote:
> I'm starting to develop a production enviroment with Postgres and
> Tomcat, And I have to choose between some free linux distribution like:
>
> whitebox
> RHEL
> Fedora
> Suse
>
> Which is the better distribution in terms of postgres? if this has an answer

If you are looking for boxes to run PostgreSQL, you may want to add
Ubuntu to your list. Ubuntu is free to use and supported, and commercial
support available too. We use PostgreSQL internally, including on a
monster box with 12GB of RAM, and have a vested interest in ensuring it
works well. http://www.ubuntulinux.org

If you need Java on the boxes running PostgreSQL, that will probably be
the decisive factor - Java licencing makes it difficult for free
distributions to provide easy installation and support.

--
Stuart Bishop <stuart(dot)bishop(at)canonical(dot)com> http://www.canonical.com/
Canonical Ltd. http://www.ubuntulinux.com/

I run Postgres on Gentoo and it works fine.

By the way, I have to tell that the best linux is Gentoo.

Mage

On Thu, 20 Jan 2005, Joshua D. Drake wrote:

>> Is there any evidence of the above claim? I've seen a link to a l-k
>> bug report about ext3, but apparently it was totally unconfirmed
>> (and a single bug does not mean a FS is not good - I remember XFS
>> being hammered heavily before being accepted into Linux).
>
> EXT3 works. It is just dog slow and yes there is plenty of evidence
> to EXT3s problems. Even from the author himself. Just review the kernel
> threads and mailing lists. Note that a lot of the problem have been fixed.

It's just that EXT3 bugs are exposed, and discussed in the wild.

Again, please provide this "evidence", expecially for the "dog slow" part.

As for problems, I don't count bugs, expecially already fixed ones, as
problems. A "problem" to me is something you can't correct and have to live
with it. As a design flaw. EXT3 for sure has a huge user base, compared to
XFS, so counting the number of bug reports on linux-kernel is meaningless,
since XFS is a _recent_ addition to the mainstream kernel.

>> I'm using ext3 cause all other FSes are simple add-ons in linux.All of them
>> struggled a lot before being able to meet linux high
>> quality standards and being accepted into mainstream. Ext3 was there
>> from the start. Of course that doesn't mean it fits PostgreSQL needs
>> better than other FSes.
>
> Well that isnt exactly true. EXT3 is a bolt on to EXT2 which was always
> there. Reiser is also a long time kernel at least from 2.2. XFS is also
> a long time Linux supporter and its inclusion into the main tree had
> nothing to do with quality.
>
> Just because something isn't in the main tree doesn't mean that the quality
> is lacking. A lot of times it is just politics.

Interesting point of view. When it comes to filesystems, I tend to
trust Al Viro's (linux VFS and generic filesystems mantainer) opinion.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2003/12/2/150

"bloated", "[locking] it's a fscking mess", "long past the point where
maintainers had lost any control over it". I see no politics in that.
Just plain technical concerns about code quality. That was only
one year ago.

Anyway, XFS got merged, so I guess now it's up to tolerable quality,
I hope.

But still I don't like this:

http://oss.sgi.com/projects/xfs/faq.html#nulls

It seems it journals only metadata. You need _all_ processes in your system
to use fsync or the O_SYNC flag. Otherwise you're going to _loose data_.
There's no mount option about that. Compare EXT3 mount options:
data=journal, data=ordered, data=writeback.
It seems XFS only supports something similar to data=writeback.

EXT3 default mode is data=ordered:
"All data is forced directly out to the main file system prior to its
metadata being committed to the journal."

No wonder EXT3 (in default mode) may result slower than XFS, it's
comparing oranges with apples. PostgreSQL users might not be affected,
if they run with fsync on. If the application forces sync operations,
I doubt there's any measurable difference between the two filesystems.
The storage will be the bottleneck.

> There is a reason that all major distributions supported XFS, Reiser and JFS
> before RedHat and it has nothing to do with quality.

Yes, user demand. Many distros support broken drivers, unstables patches,
and lots of stuff that doesn't make it for the vanilla kernel, due to
quality concerns. So you're right. It has nothing to do with quality...

EXT3 and XFS have quite different feature sets, and I think both
are a valid choice for PostgreSQL systems. Choose depending on your needs.
But, please stop spreading FUD about EXT3, unless you provide direct
links to "evidence". Generic "search the lists" isn't enough, I could
say the same about XFS, and any other FS, of course. No software is born
perfect.

.TM.
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/ / / Marco Colombo
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/ / / ESI s.r.l.
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