Storage location of temporary files - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Christian Schröder
Subject Storage location of temporary files
Date
Msg-id 490ABB59.4090102@deriva.de
Whole thread Raw
Responses Re: Storage location of temporary files  (Christian Schröder <cs@deriva.de>)
Re: Storage location of temporary files  (Sam Mason <sam@samason.me.uk>)
Re: Storage location of temporary files  (Tomasz Ostrowski <tometzky@batory.org.pl>)
List pgsql-general
Hi list,
I want to optimize the performance of our PostgreSQL 8.2 server. Up to
now the server has a raid1 where the whole database is located
(including tha WAL files). We will now move the database to a raid5
(which should be faster than the raid1) and will also move the WAL to a
separate disk (which should, according to the docs, also increase the
performance).
But I see the temporary files as another important performance
bottleneck. From the docs (chapter 17.4.1):

    work_mem (integer)
    Specifies the amount of memory to be used by internal sort
    operations and hash tables before switching to temporary disk files.
    [...]

We have rather complex queries and as I far as I see from the disk usage
patterns the system makes use of temporary disk files. So I would like
to use a faster disk for these temporary files, too, but I could not
find where the temporary files are located. Is there a separate
directory? I have found a "pgsql_tmp" directory inside of the database
directories ("base/<oid>/pgsql_tmp"). Is this what I'm looking for?
Thanks for your help!

Regards,
    Christian

--
Deriva GmbH                         Tel.: +49 551 489500-42
Financial IT and Consulting         Fax:  +49 551 489500-91
Hans-Böckler-Straße 2                  http://www.deriva.de
D-37079 Göttingen

Deriva CA Certificate: http://www.deriva.de/deriva-ca.cer



pgsql-general by date:

Previous
From: Craig Ringer
Date:
Subject: Re: Decreasing WAL size effects
Next
From: Christian Schröder
Date:
Subject: Re: Storage location of temporary files