I've just been looking through the options which can and cannot be set in
postgresql.conf and have a few points to raise.
1. There are some undocumented options which appear to relate to WAL:
Name Variable Default Set by
checkpoint_timeout CheckPointTimeout 300 Startupwal_buffers XLOGbuffers 8
Startupwal_files XLOGfiles 0 Startupwal_debug &XLOG_DEBU 0
Superusercommit_delay &CommitDelay 5 User
Is there any text anywhere to explain what these do? (Point me to that or some commented code, and I'll write a
documentationpatch.)
2. The following command line options to postgres don't have an equivalent in postgresql.conf. Is that intentional?
(I suppose it is in several cases, and I have left out some where it is obviously intentional.) I can't see why
theseitems can't be put in the configuration file:
Option Action
-C Noversion = true [not documented in postgres man page]-D potential_Datadir = arg [set PGDATA]-E
EchoQuery = true [echo queries to log]-e EuroDates = true [use European format for dates]-N
UseNewLine= 0 [newline is not a query separator]-o [set stdout, stderr to file arg]
3. I see the -E is documented as being for stand-alone mode only; in fact it is useful for getting the query into
thebackend log in normal operation.
4. The documentation for -o is confusing:
-o file-name
Sends all debugging and error output to OutputFile. If the backendis running under the postmaster, error messages are
stillsent tothe frontend process as well as to OutputFile, but debugging outputis sent to the controlling tty of the
postmaster(since only one file descriptor can be sent to an actual file).
I think this is saying that, under the postmaster, debugging output does not get sent to OutputFile, and error
messagesare sent both to OutputFile and to the frontend. Is that correct?
--
Oliver Elphick Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
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