Is there an easy/clean way to adapt my old config file to the new stuff, I'm not sure what all has changed, so wondering if I just have to go line by line and somehow consolidate old to new, area there any tools or mechanism to do so?
Ehhh, at that point, it's probably best to just start over. we took the annotated postgresql.conf and reevaluated each setting and compared it to similar/same settings in our old config. Then we made a file of *just* the stuff we changed, and made that the postgresql.conf, and keep the annotated version around as defaults.conf to use as a reference. That makes it a lot easier to copy between versions or incorporate new/modified settings.
Of course, all this will probably be moot when 9.3 comes out, as I believe it has the ability to include configuration fragments. Probably another good opportunity to clean up your configs.
We jumped from 8.2 to 9.1 in a single upgrade, so while not quite as wide as going from 7.x to 9.2, you could probably benefit from a reeval.
The fundamental settings are pretty much the same, so far as I know. Settings we always change:
Settings that are new, and could assist in setting up streaming or backups:
wal_level max_wal_senders
People are getting more and more vocal about increasing cpu_tuple_cost, as the default is apparently too low in practice.
Everything else? Salt to taste.
-- Shaun Thomas
Thanks Shaun
Ya I actually didn't upgrade from 7 to 9 in one fell swoop, I've actually been pretty good at staying up with the releases (thanks to slon), but I realized the other day when i rolled a new 9.2.4 rpm that I just keep using my old postgres config. Now I'm sure we modified it somewhat in 8, but that was probably the last time. So a performance tuning and config file cleansing is in order :)
