Andrew Sullivan wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 08, 2004 at 02:07:35AM +0200, Marko Karppinen wrote:
> > One thing to keep in mind is that system administrators don't see
> > symlinks as being informational -- they see them as the actual UI
> > for the redirection in question. So their expectation is that they'll
> > be able to move the actual directory around at will (as long as they
> > update the symlink to match).
>
> This is a good point. It's worth keeping in mind, too, that in large
> shops, the DBAs and the sysadmins often are in separate departments
> with separate management, precisely because the database system has
> traditionally been somewhat divorced from the OS (as an aside, I
> suspect that this sort of separation is part of the reason for the
> popularity of raw filesystems among DBAs. Even if they didn't
> provide better speed, it's just preferable not to have to involve
> another department). System administrators in such places have been
> known to decide to "reorganise the disks", assuming that the database
> just has its own home. For such a sysadmin, a pile of symlinks would
> be fair game for reorganisation.
Agreed. I think the idea is to use lstat to query the symlink, rather
than storing that information in the database. My idea was to create an
lstat server-side function that could be used by pg_dump and friends.
-- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610)
359-1001+ If your life is a hard drive, | 13 Roberts Road + Christ can be your backup. | Newtown Square,
Pennsylvania19073
