On Tuesday, June 19, 2012, Guillaume Lelarge wrote:
On Tue, 19 Jun 2012 08:44:24 +0800, Magnus Hagander <magnus@hagander.net>
wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 18, 2012 at 3:42 PM, Guillaume Lelarge
> <guillaume@lelarge.info> wrote:
>> On Sun, 2012-06-17 at 12:40 -0400, Tom Lane wrote:
>>> Dave Page <dpage@pgadmin.org> writes:
>>> > On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 4:39 PM, Magnus Hagander
>>> > <magnus@hagander.net> wrote:
>>> >> Uh, that part is just incorrect. Several sets of platform packages
>>> >> certainly do initdb for you. And AFAIK every single one of them on
>>> >> Linux at least do service setup for you.
>>>
>>> > Hmm, clearly it's been a while since I did a PG installation on
Debian
>>> > (oddly!), as that does seem to leave the server up and running. I'm
>>> > fairly certain it didn't in the past.
>>> > RPMs on the other hand, do not.
>>>
>>> FWIW, Red-Hat-based systems have a strong distro policy against
starting
>>> servers merely because the package got installed --- the theory is
that
>>> an "everything" install should not leave the user running a bunch of
>>> servers he doesn't know about and maybe hasn't configured securely.
>>>
>>> I'm a bit surprised to hear that Debian does it differently; although
>>> it's possible that they distinguish manual from automatic install
>>> scenarios. It's a little bit saner to do an auto service start if you
>>> know that the user explicitly requested this specific package.
>>>
>>
>> When you use aptitude or apt-get to install the server package, it will
>> install the binaires, execute initdb, and start the server. I much
>> prefer the RPM way of doing it (IOW, not starting the server). Anyway,
I
>> guess there are both pros and cons in both methods.
>
> Yeah. But it's a good point that since they are different, I should
> add info to each of the pages saying exactly how it behaves on that
> specific platform.
I'm not sure this is really our responsibility. The package maintainer
should have a webpage explaining how his packages work.
One of the main reasons for this change is that it *is* our responsibility. People come to us to get PostgreSQL. If we can't tell them how to install it, they turn away. This is one of the reasons why people end up using the oneclicks even in cases where it's not a good idea - because we do tell them how to do that ("click here, then follow the instructions").
But it is also information that we can, relatively easy, provide for the end user, that is very valuable to those who aren't experienced in the platform.
//Magnus
--
Magnus Hagander
Me:
http://www.hagander.net/ Work:
http://www.redpill-linpro.com/
