Re: Questions on 8.1 install - Mailing list pgsql-general

Scott Marlowe wrote:

On Wed, 2005-11-23 at 12:39, Gary Horton wrote: 

My primary question: is this the correct interest list for questions 
about installation? I'll stop there until someone confirms for me that 
I'm doing the right thing -- if you would be so kind, please cc me at my 
email since I'm not signed up to receive interest-list messages...   

This would be the list.  Be sure and include the OS and version you're
running, and anything else that you think might be useful to help folks
figure out how to help ya...

Thanks Scott!

My OS is Solaris 9, and I'm trying to install Postgres 8.1.0. One of our primary concerns is to have a relocatable install (which, for us, means we can tar up the existing install and plop it down somewhere else, and it will still work -- i.e. there are no absolute pathnames /compiled/ into the Postgres).

Here are my questions, from reading through the INSTALL document:

• what is --disable-rpath? This is mentioned wrt "if you want relocatability" but nothing else is mentioned in INSTALL...should I use this? Why, or why not?
• Does use of the --prefix compromise relocatability? I'm hoping this just specifies where the final output directories are written, and it is not referenced as a top-level path in the compiled binaries (so that, again, I can tar these output directories up and move them somewhere else)?
  
• In the --prefix comments (in INSTALL doc), mention is made of not leaving "the following options" at their defaults if you want a relocatable installation, but it's unclear whether this mean ALL of the following options or just the ones up to the point where the Note appears about "shared installation locations"...or just what it means. Can someone clarify?
  
• --enable-nls[=LANGUAGES] ... if I specify this with a list of languages, how do I confirm it's working? Would this involve e.g. setenv of certain variables and then looking at the exception messages coming from database, or just how would you suggest I confirm this? We would care about this so that e.g. any database error messages would be automatically localized...is this the same kind of thing that enable-nls does for us?
  
• configure options that we "used to use" (I've inherited an old codebase here and am trying to get up-to-date) which are apparently not offered anymore (?)
  • --with-template=solaris (this looks like it's for older versions)
    
  • --enable-syslog (seems like others have used it recently, but I find no documentation about it)
    
  • --enable-locale (seems like others have used it recently, but I find no documentation about it)
  • --enable-multibyte (this looks like it's for older versions?)
  • --with-java (I find no documentation about it in 8.1.0 install, although yes it is there in 7.3.4 install - removed?)
• why should I (or should I not) use --enable-thread-safety (i.e. what's my motivation...)? I understand thread-safety of course, but just want more clarity of what it means in this context (postgres). What trade-offs should I be aware of?

Thanks so much for anyone's insights. Once again, if you would be so kind, please cc me at my email since I'm not signed up to receive interest-list messages...

- Gary