Re: postgresql-8.3.7 unexpected connection closures - Mailing list pgsql-general

On Fri, 2009-06-19 at 01:03 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
> Craig Ringer <craig@postnewspapers.com.au> writes:
> > I increasingly wonder if Symantec or McAfee can be persuaded to offer a
> > buildfarm machine with their software to PostgreSQL. Virus scanners on
> > servers are an (IMO nearly insane) fact of life on Windows, apparently,
> > and certainly on Windows desktops that may also run PostgreSQL, so it
> > needs to get along with them.
>
> There's always the "friends don't let friends run servers on Windows"
> approach.

... a sentiment I can't really argue with most of the time.

Alas, people are sometimes forced into it by braindead corporate policy,
central IT management, and the like. It'd be nice if Pg could play well
with at least the less horrifyingly broken virus scanners out there, at
least when excluded from scanning. Mostly this seems to mean dealing
with DLLs being injected into the process address space.

Sometimes people also run Pg on home/work desktops, whether for
development or just for small databases. It'd be nice if this use worked
well in the face of a frankly rather hostile host (virus scanners,
firewalls, etc).

Of course, I've done enough development on Windows to know just how much
I dislike it, so I'm hardly leaping to the task...

I see lots of questions here that seem to be related to (a) virus
scanner interference and (b) installation/reinstallation. Lots of the
reinstall issues seem to be with people who don't really understand NT
users, ACLs, etc and aren't really competent to admin a machine, but
they do make me wonder if the Pg installer can do more to help them out,
eg:

"The data directory you have specified (C:\PgData) already exists, but
cannot be accessed by the user you want to run PostgreSQL as. Would you
like to: [a] use a new data directory, [b] grant the postgresql user the
rights to access the data directory you have specified, or [c] change
the user you start PostgreSQL as to the user owning the data directory ?
[clean install to new directory][grant access to old directory][change
postgresql user][cancel installation]"

"The data directory you have specified (C:\PgData) contains a database
from an older version of PostgreSQL (8.2) that this version (8.3.6)
cannot access. Would you like to use a new data directory C:\PgData-8.3,
leaving the old one untouched? Note that PostgreSQL will not
automatically convert your data. You REALLY should read the upgrading
documentation before continuing. [clean install to new data
directory][cancel installation]"

"PostgreSQL has detected that another program, probably an older version
of PostgreSQL, is listening on port 5432. If you want to use this
version on the default port 5432, you will need to stop or uninstall the
other program first. [Change PostgreSQL port][Cancel installation]"



Of course, if Windows development is un-fun, windows program
installation and installer building is more so.

--
Craig Ringer