Thread: what Linux to run

Our application runs on Windows, however we have been told that we can
pick any OS to run our server on.  I'm thinking Linux because from
everything I've read, it appears to be a better on performance and there
are other features like tablespaces which we could take advantage of.
On our hosted solution, the application runs in a Software as a Service
model and being able to keep each companies tables in their own table
space would be nice.  Additionally it appears that there are a lot more
ways to tune the engine if we need to than under windows, plus the
capability to hold more connections.

If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
on.  This machine would be dedicated to the database only.

I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
version.  I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.


Best Regards,


Michael Gould
Intermodal Software Solutions, LLC
904-226-0978

If you're going to use it for anything important, go with a mainstream distribution with commercial support available.

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, mgould@isstrucksoftware.net wrote:

> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres on.
> This machine would be dedicated to the database only.

Michael,

   There is no 'preferred' linux distribution; the flame wars on this topic
died out a decade or so ago.

   From what you write, I would suggest that you look at one of the Ubunutus
<http://www.ubuntu.org/>. Either the KDE or Gnome versions will appear
Microsoft-like; the Xfce version appears more like CDE. Download a bootable
.iso (a.k.a. 'live disk) and burn it to a cdrom and you can try it without
.installing it. If you do like it, install it from the same disk.

   The Ubuntus boot directly into the GUI and that tends to be more
comfortable for newly defenestrated users. If you like that, but want the
more open and readily-available equivalent, install Debian. The ubuntus are
derivatives of debian.

   We use Slackware here, but that's not as easy a transition as are the
ubuntus.

   Regardless of what distribution you select, there's a learning curve and a
ton of help on mail lists and Web-based fora. The F/OSS community has always
been excepionally helpful to everyone.

   Good decision. Now make it happen. :-)

Rich

On Feb 28, 2012, at 9:16 AM, Adam Cornett wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 11:57 AM, <mgould@isstrucksoftware.net> wrote:
> Our application runs on Windows, however we have been told that we can
> pick any OS to run our server on.  I'm thinking Linux because from
> everything I've read, it appears to be a better on performance and there
> are other features like tablespaces which we could take advantage of.
> On our hosted solution, the application runs in a Software as a Service
> model and being able to keep each companies tables in their own table
> space would be nice.  Additionally it appears that there are a lot more
> ways to tune the engine if we need to than under windows, plus the
> capability to hold more connections.

Sounds like a good choice.

> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
> on.  This machine would be dedicated to the database only.

There isn't really a preferred distro in technical terms - all the major
distros are fine. Where they differ is available support, stability and
support lifespan.

For production a good bet is probably RHEL if you have money to
spend. Other good options include CentOS (RHEL knock-off without
the Redhat infrastructure), Debian and maybe Ubuntu LTS[1]. Anything
that has decent support available (both peer and paid) will be fine.

Ununtu is a little friendlier to beginners, and RHEL a little more unfriendly,
but there's not that much in it.

> I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
> version.  I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
> in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.

They all provide a fairly similar command line environment and all
offer several GUI environments.

Cheers,
  Steve

[1] I love Ubuntu and use it on many of my servers, but it's a bit too far
towards the cutting-edge end of the stable-to-bleeding-edge spectrum.

>>
>> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
>> on.  This machine would be dedicated to the database only.=20
>>
>> I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
>> version.  I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
>> in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.
>> =20
>>
Hi,

one thing you might want to consider is system lifetime: some distro may be set up so that you
more or less have to reinstall within 2 years, if you plan to use update service - others may be
longer.
Now, fast development is great AND allows you to change to better hardware easily.
It does however mean that you might get surprised with a different postgres version at times
you dont really like it.
If you plan to install from source, this would not be of any concern

regards
Wolfgang Hamann

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, hamann.w@t-online.de wrote:

> one thing you might want to consider is system lifetime: some distro may
> be set up so that you more or less have to reinstall within 2 years, if
> you plan to use update service - others may be longer. Now, fast
> development is great AND allows you to change to better hardware easily.
> It does however mean that you might get surprised with a different
> postgres version at times you dont really like it. If you plan to install
> from source, this would not be of any concern

Wolfgang,

   Most updates fix security vulnerabilities. If you keep current with those
there's not a compelling need to upgrade the distribution itself unless you
want to do so. There's a distinction between the distribution itself
(kernel, and GNU tools) and the end-user applications bundled with the
distribution. Also, the distributions with which I'm familiar allow you to
select the applications to upgrade so you can avoid surprises.

Rich

>>
>> On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, hamann.w@t-online.de wrote:
>>
>> > one thing you might want to consider is system lifetime: some distro may
>> > be set up so that you more or less have to reinstall within 2 years, if
>> > you plan to use update service - others may be longer. Now, fast
>> > development is great AND allows you to change to better hardware easily.
>> > It does however mean that you might get surprised with a different
>> > postgres version at times you dont really like it. If you plan to install
>> > from source, this would not be of any concern
>>
>> Wolfgang,
>>
>>    Most updates fix security vulnerabilities. If you keep current with those
>> there's not a compelling need to upgrade the distribution itself unless you
>> want to do so. There's a distinction between the distribution itself
>> (kernel, and GNU tools) and the end-user applications bundled with the
>> distribution. Also, the distributions with which I'm familiar allow you to
>> select the applications to upgrade so you can avoid surprises.
>>

Hi Rich,

if - after say 18 months, I do no longer get updates (this seems to be lifecycle of
the locally popular SuSE), it means that you either have to do an upgrade install
or forget about security fixes. Now the upgrade install might bring you some software
with incompatible changes, or even might replace some software you used to rely on
with something different
After some unpleasant surprises I stopped to upgrade: rather get a fresh box, install
everything there, and once it plays nicely, swap them

Regards
Wolfgang

On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 10:17 AM, Rich Shepard <rshepard@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

>  The Ubuntus boot directly into the GUI and that tends to be more
> comfortable for newly defenestrated users. If you like that, but want the
> more open and readily-available equivalent, install Debian. The ubuntus are
> derivatives of debian.

Note that Ubuntu also comes in a GUI free server edition as well.  I
can definitely state that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server edition is rock
solid stable for the hardware I've run it on (48 core AMD and 40 core
Intel machines with LSI, Arecam and 3Ware cards)

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> wrote:
> Note that Ubuntu also comes in a GUI free server edition as well.  I
> can definitely state that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server edition is rock
> solid stable for the hardware I've run it on (48 core AMD and 40 core
> Intel machines with LSI, Arecam and 3Ware cards)

Ubuntu 9.10 isn't LTS, but it's served me just fine. I have a server
that's not been rebooted since July 2010 (including a database-using
application process that has been running since boot, and is in
constant use), and I don't feel like bringing it down to bring it up
to date! Really, any of the main-stream Linuxes should be fine.

Chris Angelico

> Note that Ubuntu also comes in a GUI free server edition as well.  I can
> definitely state that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server edition is rock solid stable

+1

I've been running 10.04 LTS Server for over three years (on a Dell PowerEdge
2850) using Martin Pitt's PostgreSQL 9.1 PPA.

--
Gary Chambers

> I've been running 10.04 LTS Server for over three years (on a Dell PowerEdge
> 2850) using Martin Pitt's PostgreSQL 9.1 PPA.

I apologize.  That's over two years.

--
G.

On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 10:05 AM, Gary Chambers <gwchamb@gwcmail.com> wrote:
>> I've been running 10.04 LTS Server for over three years (on a Dell
>> PowerEdge
>> 2850) using Martin Pitt's PostgreSQL 9.1 PPA.
>
>
> I apologize.  That's over two years.

Darnit!  I was hoping to borrow your time machine too.  :)

Le mercredi 29 février 2012 à 11:31 -0500, Gary Chambers a écrit :
> > Note that Ubuntu also comes in a GUI free server edition as well.  I can
> > definitely state that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server edition is rock solid stable
>
> +1
>
> I've been running 10.04 LTS Server for over three years (on a Dell PowerEdge
> 2850) using Martin Pitt's PostgreSQL 9.1 PPA.
>

Hi,

I find that using the Dedian distribution (which Ubuntu is based on)
makes the process of building a server very simple and reliable. Below
are the notes I took for the last one; you'll have most steps outlined;
it uses a LAMP stack made of Linux+Apache+Mod_Perl+Postgresql.

The one I built before this one was up for 550 days, serving 5 users
full time. The machine is the cheapest server at online.net (dedibox, 15
€/month)), it serves 100 requests/seconds, session validation included.
I only took it down because it required a bios update.

#
#Install Notes
#

Debian V6.0.0 (64BITS)
Date 2012 01 26

#installation initiale avec sda1,2 et 3 seulement
apt-get install parted
#après installation, création des partitions logiques 5,6,7
#et remount de /var, /home, /var/log dessus

#
#ssh
#

#edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# Authentication:
LoginGraceTime 60
PermitRootLogin no
StrictModes yes
#pas plus de quatre essais (message dans les logs à partir de la
troisième erreur)
MaxAuthTries 4
AllowUsers XXXXX

#edit .ssh/config on workstation

#ssh displays funky characters
dpkg-reconfigure locales
  207. fr_FR ISO-8859-1
  208. fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8
  209. fr_FR@euro ISO-8859-15

default : fr_FR@euro

#désactiver les programmes lancés par défaut et non utilisés
update-rc.d -f bind9 remove
update-rc.d -f mdadm remove
update-rc.d -f portmap remove

#run
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

#utilities
apt-get install gcc rsync sqlite3 make
apt-get install git

#
#Postgresql
#
apt-get install postgresql postgresql-client postgresql-plperl-8.4

createuser -d XXXXX

#pg_dumpall && pg_restore cluster from workstation

#
#Apache
#
apt-get install apache2-mpm-worker libapache2-request-perl
libapache2-mod-perl2 libapache2-mod-apreq2 apache2.2-common

#configure logrotate : edit /etc/logrotate.d/apache2

#enable apache2 modules
a2enmod ssl rewrite apreq

#
#install perl modules
#

#pre-compiled binaries for DBI & DBD::Pg & sqlite3
apt-get install libapache-dbi-perl libdbd-pg-perl libdbd-sqlite3-perl

Done.

--
Vincent Veyron
http://marica.fr/
Logiciel de gestion des sinistres et des contentieux pour le service juridique

On 28/02/2012 18:17, Rich Shepard wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, mgould@isstrucksoftware.net wrote:
>
>> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
>> on. This machine would be dedicated to the database only.
>
> Michael,
>
>   There is no 'preferred' linux distribution; the flame wars on this topic
> died out a decade or so ago.
>
>   From what you write, I would suggest that you look at one of the Ubunutus
> <http://www.ubuntu.org/>. Either the KDE or Gnome versions will appear
> Microsoft-like; the Xfce version appears more like CDE. Download a bootable
> .iso (a.k.a. 'live disk) and burn it to a cdrom and you can try it without
> .installing it. If you do like it, install it from the same disk.
>
>   The Ubuntus boot directly into the GUI and that tends to be more
> comfortable for newly defenestrated users. If you like that, but want the
> more open and readily-available equivalent, install Debian. The ubuntus are
> derivatives of debian.

One interesting thing I've discovered recently is that there is a HUGE
difference in performance between CentOS 6.0 and Ubuntu Server 10.04
(LTS) in at least the memory allocator and possibly also multithreading
libraries (in favour of CentOS). PostgreSQL shouldn't be particularly
sensitive to either of these, but it makes me wonder what else is
suboptimal in Ubuntu.

On 28/02/2012 17:57, mgould@isstrucksoftware.net wrote:
> Our application runs on Windows, however we have been told that we can
> pick any OS to run our server on.  I'm thinking Linux because from
> everything I've read, it appears to be a better on performance and there
> are other features like tablespaces which we could take advantage of.
> On our hosted solution, the application runs in a Software as a Service
> model and being able to keep each companies tables in their own table
> space would be nice.  Additionally it appears that there are a lot more
> ways to tune the engine if we need to than under windows, plus the
> capability to hold more connections.
>
> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
> on.  This machine would be dedicated to the database only.
>
> I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
> version.  I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
> in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.

Hi,

PostgreSQL administration would not benefit much from a GUI, as it is
basically centered around editing and tuning configuration files (either
its or the OS's).

For Linux, if you want stability and decent performance, you should
probably choose either CentOS, or if you want commercial support, Red
Hat Enterprise Linux (which is basically the same thing, only commercial).

Personally, I'd recommend FreeBSD (it's not a Linux, it's more
Unix-like) but I'm probably biased ;)

On Thu, Mar 1, 2012 at 5:25 AM, Ivan Voras <ivoras@freebsd.org> wrote:
>
> One interesting thing I've discovered recently is that there is a HUGE
> difference in performance between CentOS 6.0 and Ubuntu Server 10.04
> (LTS) in at least the memory allocator and possibly also multithreading
> libraries (in favour of CentOS). PostgreSQL shouldn't be particularly
> sensitive to either of these, but it makes me wonder what else is
> suboptimal in Ubuntu.

To be fair, RHEL6 was released 7 months after Ubuntu 10.04.  But
Redhat is pretty good at kernel patching for optimizations ertc. I'd
be more interested in comparisons with ubuntu 12.04, due out next
month.

Ivan Voras wrote:
> On 28/02/2012 17:57, mgould@isstrucksoftware.net wrote:
>> Our application runs on Windows, however we have been told that we can
>> pick any OS to run our server on.  I'm thinking Linux because from
>> everything I've read, it appears to be a better on performance and there
>> are other features like tablespaces which we could take advantage of.
>> On our hosted solution, the application runs in a Software as a Service
>> model and being able to keep each companies tables in their own table
>> space would be nice.  Additionally it appears that there are a lot more
>> ways to tune the engine if we need to than under windows, plus the
>> capability to hold more connections.
>>
>> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
>> on.  This machine would be dedicated to the database only.
>>
>> I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
>> version.  I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
>> in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.
>
> Hi,
>
> PostgreSQL administration would not benefit much from a GUI, as it is
> basically centered around editing and tuning configuration files (either
> its or the OS's).
>
> For Linux, if you want stability and decent performance, you should
> probably choose either CentOS, or if you want commercial support, Red
> Hat Enterprise Linux (which is basically the same thing, only commercial).
>
> Personally, I'd recommend FreeBSD (it's not a Linux, it's more
> Unix-like) but I'm probably biased ;)

+1 from me.

http://leaf.dragonflybsd.org/mailarchive/kernel/2011-11/msg00017.html

Nice numbers with a choice, BSD excel not in numbers but in stability
surviving all tests.

--
Sphinx of black quartz judge my vow.

On 02/03/12 01:25, Ivan Voras wrote:

On 28/02/2012 18:17, Rich Shepard wrote:

On Tue, 28 Feb 2012, mgould@isstrucksoftware.net wrote:

If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
on. This machine would be dedicated to the database only.

Michael,
 There is no 'preferred' linux distribution; the flame wars on this topic
died out a decade or so ago.
 From what you write, I would suggest that you look at one of the Ubunutus
<http://www.ubuntu.org/>. Either the KDE or Gnome versions will appear
Microsoft-like; the Xfce version appears more like CDE. Download a bootable
.iso (a.k.a. 'live disk) and burn it to a cdrom and you can try it without
.installing it. If you do like it, install it from the same disk.
 The Ubuntus boot directly into the GUI and that tends to be more
comfortable for newly defenestrated users. If you like that, but want the
more open and readily-available equivalent, install Debian. The ubuntus are
derivatives of debian.

One interesting thing I've discovered recently is that there is a HUGE
difference in performance between CentOS 6.0 and Ubuntu Server 10.04
(LTS) in at least the memory allocator and possibly also multithreading
libraries (in favour of CentOS). PostgreSQL shouldn't be particularly
sensitive to either of these, but it makes me wonder what else is
suboptimal in Ubuntu.

I think if you are going to select a member of the Debian family, I would strongly recommend Debian itself. I have the impression that the Debian community is more serious about quality than Canonical (the company behind Ubuntu).

Given a choice between RHEL, Centos, and Ubuntu.  I would recommend either of RHE or, Centos - the former if you have the budget for the support & piece of mind.  Red Hat has won awards for its quality of User Service - and Red Hat contributes vastly more effort towards maintaining the Linux kernel than Canonical.

In a about a year I will be setting up a server for a JBoss/PostgreSQL based application. Currently I'm thinking of using either Centos (RHEL if we get sufficient budget) or Debian, but I will defer the actual decision to nearer the time. I use Fedora for my development box, and my current test server runs Ubuntu (not my choice, but I see no significant reasons for changing it at the moment, though I'm tempted).

Cheers,
Gavin

 Lørdag 3. mars 2012 01.43.29 skrev Gavin Flower :

> I think if you are going to select a member of the Debian family, I
> would strongly recommend Debian itself. I have the impression that the
> Debian community is more serious about quality than Canonical (the
> company behind Ubuntu).

I haven't run Debian for ten years, when I had a headless old PC running with
a LAMP stack. Since I discovered Gentoo, that has been my preferred distro.
However, I'm currently in the process of setting up a dedicated Web server
with Debian as it may one day be another person's responsibility to admin this
box, and I would consider it cruel to leave a Gentoo box to anyone but the
most devoted Linux fans.

My current gripe is this: The «stable» version of Postgres on Debian is 8.4.
In order to install 9.1, I added this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Then I did an apt-get update and

apt-get install postgresql-9.1 postgresql-client-9.1

Finally I commented out the added line of /etc/apt/sources.list.

This seems a rather roundabout way, is there a better one?

regards, Leif

Two quick notes:

On 03/03/2012 10:33, Leif Biberg Kristensen wrote:
>  Lørdag 3. mars 2012 01.43.29 skrev Gavin Flower :
>
>> I think if you are going to select a member of the Debian family, I
>> would strongly recommend Debian itself. I have the impression that the
>> Debian community is more serious about quality than Canonical (the
>> company behind Ubuntu).
>
> I haven't run Debian for ten years, when I had a headless old PC running with
> a LAMP stack. Since I discovered Gentoo, that has been my preferred distro.
> However, I'm currently in the process of setting up a dedicated Web server
> with Debian as it may one day be another person's responsibility to admin this
> box, and I would consider it cruel to leave a Gentoo box to anyone but the
> most devoted Linux fans.
>
> My current gripe is this: The «stable» version of Postgres on Debian is 8.4.
> In order to install 9.1, I added this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:
>
> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
>
> Then I did an apt-get update and
>
> apt-get install postgresql-9.1 postgresql-client-9.1
>
> Finally I commented out the added line of /etc/apt/sources.list.
>
> This seems a rather roundabout way, is there a better one?

You can get Postgres 9.1 from backports.debian.org:

deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

Ray.


--
Raymond O'Donnell :: Galway :: Ireland
rod@iol.ie

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 9:33 PM, Leif Biberg Kristensen
<leif@solumslekt.org> wrote:
> My current gripe is this: The «stable» version of Postgres on Debian is 8.4.
> In order to install 9.1...
> This seems a rather roundabout way, is there a better one?

We use Debian at work, and I went for the other favorite way of
getting Linux software: compile it from source. That does mean that I
have to personally support it, though, and it has a few other
consequences (had to compile a couple of other things from source
instead of apt-getting them), but it's always a valid option.

ChrisA

 Lørdag 3. mars 2012 12.34.27 skrev Raymond O'Donnell :

> You can get Postgres 9.1 from backports.debian.org:
>
> deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports squeeze-backports main

Ah, sweet, thank you!

regards, Leif

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 3:33 AM, Leif Biberg Kristensen
<leif@solumslekt.org> wrote:
>
> My current gripe is this: The «stable» version of Postgres on Debian is 8.4.
> In order to install 9.1, I added this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:
>
> deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
>
> Then I did an apt-get update and
>
> apt-get install postgresql-9.1 postgresql-client-9.1
>
> Finally I commented out the added line of /etc/apt/sources.list.
>
> This seems a rather roundabout way, is there a better one?

We use something like this to put 8.4 on an older debian release.  I'm
guessing that substituting the right repo and version would work for
9.1

sudo apt-get -t lenny-backports install \
postgresql-8.4 \
postgresql-client-8.4 \
postgresql-client-common \
postgresql-common \
postgresql-contrib-8.4 \
postgresql-plpython-8.4 \
postgresql-8.4-slony1 \

Note the -t switch.

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 4:36 AM, Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 9:33 PM, Leif Biberg Kristensen
> <leif@solumslekt.org> wrote:
>> My current gripe is this: The «stable» version of Postgres on Debian is 8.4.
>> In order to install 9.1...
>> This seems a rather roundabout way, is there a better one?
>
> We use Debian at work, and I went for the other favorite way of
> getting Linux software: compile it from source. That does mean that I
> have to personally support it, though, and it has a few other
> consequences (had to compile a couple of other things from source
> instead of apt-getting them), but it's always a valid option.

When I was running a VERY busy pgsql site and needed to be able to
report a bug, get a patch and apply it quickly.  It's quite easy to
patch a system running source code.  If you've got racks of postgresql
servers you'd build new packages.  If you've got two servers in
failover, building from source is faster and easier.

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 3:56 AM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> wrote:
> Two quick notes:
>
> First, you really want a long-term support release.  Your main options here
> are Debian and spinoffs (Ubuntu LTS, for example) and RedHat Enterprise and
> spinoffs (CentOS, Scientific Linux, etc).  If you know one of these groups
> go with it.

Note that you can also start on short term releases then slide into a
long term release when a new one comes out, IF you're developing now
for a release some years in the future.  I.e. start on Fedora Core,
and migrate to Centos or RHEL, or start on non-LTS builds of ubuntu
and so on.  For OSes that have shorter spaces between LTS releases
like Ubuntu this is often the best way to put a fast system in the
field from development.  But keep in mind you may have work fixing any
issues that pop up from an upgrade before or shortly after you go
live.

On 03/03/12 23:33, Leif Biberg Kristensen wrote:

 Lørdag 3. mars 2012 01.43.29 skrev Gavin Flower :

I think if you are going to select a member of the Debian family, I
would strongly recommend Debian itself. I have the impression that the
Debian community is more serious about quality than Canonical (the
company behind Ubuntu).

I haven't run Debian for ten years, when I had a headless old PC running with 
a LAMP stack. Since I discovered Gentoo, that has been my preferred distro. 
However, I'm currently in the process of setting up a dedicated Web server 
with Debian as it may one day be another person's responsibility to admin this 
box, and I would consider it cruel to leave a Gentoo box to anyone but the 
most devoted Linux fans.

My current gripe is this: The «stable» version of Postgres on Debian is 8.4. 
In order to install 9.1, I added this line to /etc/apt/sources.list:

deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free

Then I did an apt-get update and 

apt-get install postgresql-9.1 postgresql-client-9.1

Finally I commented out the added line of /etc/apt/sources.list.

This seems a rather roundabout way, is there a better one?

regards, Leif

To be honest I got into Linux in 1994 when a friend set me up with Debian, the first distribution I installed myself was Red Hat.  Though I had previous experience with mainframes and minicomputers, starting in the mid 1970's - COBOL & FORTRAN era.  (There is a distant possibility I may get back into FORTRAN, as that is run on the HPC's at the University where I now work!!!).

My knowledge of Debian is via friend's (an extremely competent and experienced Unix guy who got me into Linux & who still runs Debian) comments and what I've noticed on the web.  For a Desktop development machine, I currently prefer Fedora, but for a server I need to be more conservative.  One place I worked used Ubuntu, but I quickly switched my machine to Fedora, when I found Ubuntu lacked the desktop things I relied on!

So I would interested in the answers, also I would need to be able to install JDK7.

Cheers,
Gavin

On 03/03/12 2:55 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>
> My knowledge of Debian is via friend's (an extremely competent and
> experienced Unix guy who got me into Linux & who still runs Debian)
> comments and what I've noticed on the web.  For a Desktop development
> machine, I currently prefer Fedora, but for a server I need to be more
> conservative.  One place I worked used Ubuntu, but I quickly switched
> my machine to Fedora, when I found Ubuntu lacked the desktop things I
> relied on!
>
> So I would interested in the answers, also I would need to be able to
> install JDK7.
>

the server equivalent to Fedora is, of course, RHEL or CentOS.    CentOS
6.2 is working very well for us for a range of stuff.

JDK7, I dunno, we're still using JDK 6 and trying very hard to stay away
from bleeding edge proprietary features.  I sure don't see anything here
we need for our work: http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk7/features/

but, any version of java can be installed on most anything... JDK's just
need to be untarred somewhere (we'll put unpackaged ones in /opt/something)



--
john r pierce                            N 37, W 122
santa cruz ca                         mid-left coast

Long thread - figured may as well toss in some data:

We use CentOS 5 and 6 and install PG from the yum repository detailed on
the postgresql.org web site.

We've found that the PG shipped as part of the OS can never be trusted
for production use, so we don't care what version ships with the OS --
we'll never use it.

Regarding JDK7 : some interesting GC features, but as a whole too scary
from a stability perspective to commit to in production. Considering
most of the good engineers have likely left due to Oracle management,
this is an area where we'll let others debug for a year or so before
considering adopting.

Regarding missing packages from desktop install : for production servers
we use the "minimal" install then explicitly add the packages we need
that are not part of that. From experience desktop distributions will
install stuff that a) creates security risks and/or b) creates stability
risks.

David Boreham <david_list@boreham.org> writes:
> Long thread - figured may as well toss in some data:
> We use CentOS 5 and 6 and install PG from the yum repository detailed on
> the postgresql.org web site.

> We've found that the PG shipped as part of the OS can never be trusted
> for production use, so we don't care what version ships with the OS --
> we'll never use it.

[ raised eyebrow... ]  As the person responsible for the packaging
you're dissing, I'd be interested to know exactly why you feel that
the Red Hat/CentOS PG packages "can never be trusted".  Certainly they
tend to be from older release branches as a result of Red Hat's desire
to not break applications after a RHEL branch is released, but they're
not generally broken AFAIK.

            regards, tom lane

On 3/3/2012 7:05 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> [ raised eyebrow... ]  As the person responsible for the packaging
> you're dissing, I'd be interested to know exactly why you feel that
> the Red Hat/CentOS PG packages "can never be trusted".  Certainly they
> tend to be from older release branches as a result of Red Hat's desire
> to not break applications after a RHEL branch is released, but they're
> not generally broken AFAIK.
>
>

No dissing intended. I didn't say or mean that OS-delivered PG builds
were generally broken (although I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see
that happen in some distributions, present company excluded).

I'm concerned about things like :

a) Picking a sufficiently recent version to get the benefit of
performance optimizations, new features and bug fixes.
b) Picking a sufficiently old version to reduce the risk of instability.
c) Picking a version that is compatible with the on-disk data I already
have on some set of existing production machines.
d) Deciding which point releases contain fixes that are relevant to our
deployment.

Respectfully, I don't trust you to come to the correct choice on these
issues for me every time, or even once.

I stick by my opinion that anyone who goes with the OS-bundled version
of a database server, for any sort of serious production use, is making
a mistake.

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 8:23 PM, David Boreham <david_list@boreham.org> wrote:
> On 3/3/2012 7:05 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>>
>>
>> [ raised eyebrow... ]  As the person responsible for the packaging
>> you're dissing, I'd be interested to know exactly why you feel that
>> the Red Hat/CentOS PG packages "can never be trusted".  Certainly they
>> tend to be from older release branches as a result of Red Hat's desire
>> to not break applications after a RHEL branch is released, but they're
>> not generally broken AFAIK.
>>
>>
>
>
> No dissing intended. I didn't say or mean that OS-delivered PG builds were
> generally broken (although I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see that
> happen in some distributions, present company excluded).
>
> I'm concerned about things like :
>
> a) Picking a sufficiently recent version to get the benefit of performance
> optimizations, new features and bug fixes.
> b) Picking a sufficiently old version to reduce the risk of instability.
> c) Picking a version that is compatible with the on-disk data I already have
> on some set of existing production machines.
> d) Deciding which point releases contain fixes that are relevant to our
> deployment.
>
> Respectfully, I don't trust you to come to the correct choice on these
> issues for me every time, or even once.
>
> I stick by my opinion that anyone who goes with the OS-bundled version of a
> database server, for any sort of serious production use, is making a
> mistake.

I have been generally happy with the RedHat/CentOS/ScientificLinux
offerings (with respect to PostgreSQL, specifically).
Furthermore, I also make extensive use of openSUSE offerings and
generally prefer them.
openSUSE has an 8 month release cycle and as a consequence I'm rarely
too far behind the latest _stable_ release, while still being able to
run the last-most-recent stable release for, I think, 3 years. If I
want more, that's what the commercial offerings are for.


--
Jon

On Sun, Mar 4, 2012 at 1:23 PM, David Boreham <david_list@boreham.org> wrote:
> I stick by my opinion that anyone who goes with the OS-bundled version of a
> database server, for any sort of serious production use, is making a
> mistake.

I would qualify this.

If you accept the OS-bundled version, you are relinquishing
responsibility to the OS packagers. If you install your choice of
package, you retain responsibility for choice of version (and if you
install from source, you retain even more). It's not a "mistake" to
use the OS-provided version necessarily, but if you have particular
needs, you always have the option of picking your own version.

ChrisA

On 03/03/12 7:01 PM, Chris Travers wrote:
> On the negative, I have seen a yum-based upgrade between versions
> happily upgrade the binaries from 8.4.x to 9.0.x....

I haven't.

the PG 9.x yum packages not only have a different name, they install
into different directories.   here I have dead stock centos 6, with the
fedora epel and the postgres developers group 9.0 repositories added.
you can run several versions of postgresql side by side on different
ports and data directories..


# yum list postgres\*
Loaded plugins: auto-update-debuginfo, fastestmirror, refresh-packagekit
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
  * base: mirror.san.fastserv.com
  * epel: linux.mirrors.es.net
  * extras: centos.mirrors.hoobly.com
  * updates: mirror.5ninesolutions.com
Installed Packages
postgresql90.x86_64                        9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
@pgdg90
postgresql90-contrib.x86_64                9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
@pgdg90
postgresql90-devel.x86_64                  9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
@pgdg90
postgresql90-libs.x86_64                   9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
@pgdg90
postgresql90-server.x86_64                 9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
@pgdg90
Available Packages
postgresql.i686                            8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql.x86_64                          8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-contrib.x86_64                  8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-devel.i686                      8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-devel.x86_64                    8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-docs.x86_64                     8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-ip4r.x86_64                     1.05-1.el6
epel
postgresql-jdbc.x86_64                     8.4.701-3.el6
base
postgresql-libs.i686                       8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-libs.x86_64                     8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-odbc.x86_64                     08.04.0200-1.el6
base
postgresql-plparrot.x86_64                 0.04-5.el6
epel
postgresql-plperl.x86_64                   8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-plpython.x86_64                 8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-pltcl.x86_64                    8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-server.x86_64                   8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql-test.x86_64                     8.4.9-1.el6_1.1
base
postgresql90-debuginfo.x86_64              9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-docs.x86_64                   9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-jdbc.x86_64                   9.0.802-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-jdbc-debuginfo.x86_64         9.0.802-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-libs.i686                     9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-odbc.x86_64                   09.00.0310-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-odbc-debuginfo.x86_64         09.00.0310-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-plperl.x86_64                 9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-plpython.x86_64               9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-pltcl.x86_64                  9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-python.x86_64                 4.0-2PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-python-debuginfo.x86_64       4.0-2PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-tcl.x86_64                    1.9.0-1.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-tcl-debuginfo.x86_64          1.9.0-1.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql90-test.x86_64                   9.0.7-1PGDG.rhel6
pgdg90
postgresql_autodoc.noarch                  1.40-1.rhel6
pgdg90

--
john r pierce                            N 37, W 122
santa cruz ca                         mid-left coast

On Sat, Mar 3, 2012 at 8:49 PM, Chris Travers <chris.travers@gmail.com> wrote:
> I thought I was clear that my experiences thus far had not been
> RHEL/CentOS/SL because I tended to compile my own on such platforms.  I have
> however seen Fedora do that, and it is a caution worth noting going forward.
>
> The question is what happens when new versions of RHEL come out, whether the
> postgresql-server package gets a new major version number.  Hopefully by
> mentioning this now, we will make sure it doesn't ;-)

I started using source code on RHEL back when it was using floating
point dates instead of integer dates.  We were using slony for
replication, and we added two Ubuntu 10.04 48 core servers, and since
slony versions must be an exact match, it meant we needed to compile
slony from source, so it was easy to add postgresql compilation from
source to our script at that point.

So if you're running a mixed server environment, especially with only
a handful of machines, it's often easier to just build from source.

On Sat, 2012-03-03 at 14:15 -0700, David Boreham wrote:
>
> We use CentOS 5 and 6 and install PG from the yum repository detailed
> on  the postgresql.org web site.

Those RPMs will probably be a part of CentOS Testing repository soon. I
and Karanbir had a chat about it at FOSDEM this year.

--
Devrim GÜNDÜZ
Principal Systems Engineer @ EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
PostgreSQL Danışmanı/Consultant, Red Hat Certified Engineer
Community: devrim~PostgreSQL.org, devrim.gunduz~linux.org.tr
http://www.gunduz.org  Twitter: http://twitter.com/devrimgunduz

On 04/03/12 09:49, John R Pierce wrote:

On 03/03/12 2:55 AM, Gavin Flower wrote:

My knowledge of Debian is via friend's (an extremely competent and experienced Unix guy who got me into Linux & who still runs Debian) comments and what I've noticed on the web.  For a Desktop development machine, I currently prefer Fedora, but for a server I need to be more conservative.  One place I worked used Ubuntu, but I quickly switched my machine to Fedora, when I found Ubuntu lacked the desktop things I relied on!

So I would interested in the answers, also I would need to be able to install JDK7.

the server equivalent to Fedora is, of course, RHEL or CentOS.    CentOS 6.2 is working very well for us for a range of stuff.

JDK7, I dunno, we're still using JDK 6 and trying very hard to stay away from bleeding edge proprietary features.  I sure don't see anything here we need for our work: http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk7/features/

but, any version of java can be installed on most anything... JDK's just need to be untarred somewhere (we'll put unpackaged ones in /opt/something)

Yes, I'd probably lean towards Centos (RHE if there is the budget).  Not only for the reasons you mentioned, but that the site seems to like Centos for some servers – even though the standard Linux desktop is Ubuntu.  Though I'm trying to keep a relatively open mind about the choice of server O/S (so long as it is Linux, of course!).

By the time my project is in wide use, JDK7 will no longer be bleeding edge.  However, hopefully way short of EOL!  :-)

The project is in fairly early stages so I have a wide latitude of what software I use.   I may go for pg9.2, as the covering indexes and other performance improvements may well prove very useful (possibly nearly essential, for one possible sub project).

I expect that once (about) mid year has passed, I will have to switch to a much more conservative approach to new versions.

The project is for training and to aid research, so there is more tolerance of errors and other problems, than systems that deal with financial processing.  Though obviously I am aiming for a perfect system that is totally reliable!  Though in practice: 'good enough', does the 'required job', and is 'sufficiently responsive' are closer to the mark.

Hmm...

I tend to _mostly_ run workstations rather than servers, & pick my distro to suit my application needs.

My workplace is a SLES site, & I use Open Suse. Given most of my Postgres databases are in fact PostGIS databases, and
needto work with a variety of other spatial data & GIS related apps, then I have a set of dependencies to work with for
everyinstall. Postgres, Postgis, GEOS, Proj, GDAL, mapserver, Java, python. QGIS, GMT, etc. 

I have liased with the package maintainers who look after the Suse GEO repository, and they are generally able to build
anyrequired package, for both server * workstation distros (SLED, SLES, OpenSuse). 

Having robust packages built by people who know more than I do about this area is core to my selection of distro. While
I'maware that Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora also have GIS related repositories, the OPenSuse ones have, for me at least, the
bestmix of currency & stability, & fantastic support. 

If your goal is to run a robust Postgres server, find the mainstream  distro which provides what you want out of the
box,so you can run the database, not wrestle with compiling it every time something changes. Only consider compiling
yourown applications if there is no such distro, or you really want to have that level of control & ownership of the
system.

Also, if you are running a VM as your server, then under Xen commercial tools, for example, SLES is fully supported by
thehypervisor. Ubuntu isn't. Makes choosing easy... 

YMMV :-)

Brent Wood

GIS/DBA consultant
NIWA
+64 (4) 4 386-0300
________________________________________
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org [pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org] on behalf of David Boreham
[david_list@boreham.org]
Sent: Sunday, March 04, 2012 3:23 PM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] what Linux to run

On 3/3/2012 7:05 PM, Tom Lane wrote:
>
> [ raised eyebrow... ]  As the person responsible for the packaging
> you're dissing, I'd be interested to know exactly why you feel that
> the Red Hat/CentOS PG packages "can never be trusted".  Certainly they
> tend to be from older release branches as a result of Red Hat's desire
> to not break applications after a RHEL branch is released, but they're
> not generally broken AFAIK.
>
>

No dissing intended. I didn't say or mean that OS-delivered PG builds
were generally broken (although I wouldn't be entirely surprised to see
that happen in some distributions, present company excluded).

I'm concerned about things like :

a) Picking a sufficiently recent version to get the benefit of
performance optimizations, new features and bug fixes.
b) Picking a sufficiently old version to reduce the risk of instability.
c) Picking a version that is compatible with the on-disk data I already
have on some set of existing production machines.
d) Deciding which point releases contain fixes that are relevant to our
deployment.

Respectfully, I don't trust you to come to the correct choice on these
issues for me every time, or even once.

I stick by my opinion that anyone who goes with the OS-bundled version
of a database server, for any sort of serious production use, is making
a mistake.












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Please consider the environment before printing this email.
NIWA is the trading name of the National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research Ltd.

Thanks for all of the help.  I will be doing some testing in VM's this
week before loading on my other server.

Michael Gould
Intermodal Software Solutions, LLC
904-226-0978


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] what Linux to run
From: r d <rd0002@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, March 05, 2012 5:25 am
To: "pgsql-general@postgresql.org" <pgsql-general@postgresql.org>

>>
>> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
>> on.  This machine would be dedicated to the database only.=20
>>
>> I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
>> version.  I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
>> in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.




I run PostgreSQL on Fedora Core 16 64bit and have never had problems,
now or before.
From that point of view I can recommend FC, but I don't know how it
compares
performance-wise to other distros.


I have been using the FC series since they split from the "RedHat Linux"
distribs at about "RedHat 9",
perhaps 10 years ago and have never missed anything, and seldom noticed
troublesome behavior.
My main criticism of FC is that the distro updates to a new version
quite often, 1-2 times per year,
and upgrades are seldom as smooth as they are supposed/advertised to be,
but they have become
much better.


Beyond that, the FC series have about everything you need for
development or anything else,
like running PG


You can use FC both with GUI and without. It comes by default with
GNOME. It also has
KDE, which looks (and works) similar to Windows. Both Gnome and KDE run
atop X.
FC has the usual Unix shells like bash (default), sh, ksh, csh, tcsh ...
and if you need
to connect to your host, there are several 3270 emulator available, for
X and also text-mode.


Two components which do not mix well with FC are Java 7 (1.7.0x) and
Oracle RDBMS 11g.
For Java, stay with the 1.6 series until the problems of 1.7 are fixed.
If you need to use  the RDBMS
besides PG then FC is not your OS. Instead, look at what systems they
(Oracle) "support".


I hope this helps you with your decision.

Hmm...

I also use 64 bit Fedora 16, on an AMD quad core at home, and on a dual Xeon quad cores at work.

For a desktop environment, I would recommend xfce for serious work over GNOME 3. However, GNOME 3 is fine if you prefer fashion over functionality. I have 25 virtual desktops, and make full use of not only multiple tabs on Firefox, but also on the nautilus directory and GNOME terminal windows – I also have useful applets on panels that auto hide, etc., GNOME 2 could support that, but not GNOME 3!

What are the problems of Java 7 on FC16? I am curious, as I am building a system using Java 7 on FC16 using JBoss 7.1 backed by PostgreSQL 9.1.

If anyone is interested, I have a bash script that installs JBoss 7.1 and converts it to use PostgreSQL.

Cheers,
Gavin

On 06/03/12 01:25, r d wrote:

>>
>> If we move to Linux, what is the preferred Linux for running Postgres
>> on.  This machine would be dedicated to the database only.=20
>>
>> I'd like a recommendation for both a GUI hosted version and a non-GUI
>> version.  I haven't used Linux in the past but did spend several year s
>> in a mixed Unix and IBM mainframe environment at the console level.

I run PostgreSQL on Fedora Core 16 64bit and have never had problems, now or before.

From that point of view I can recommend FC, but I don't know how it compares

performance-wise to other distros.

I have been using the FC series since they split from the "RedHat Linux" distribs at about "RedHat 9",

perhaps 10 years ago and have never missed anything, and seldom noticed troublesome behavior.

My main criticism of FC is that the distro updates to a new version quite often, 1-2 times per year,

and upgrades are seldom as smooth as they are supposed/advertised to be, but they have become

much better.

Beyond that, the FC series have about everything you need for development or anything else,

like running PG

You can use FC both with GUI and without. It comes by default with GNOME. It also has

KDE, which looks (and works) similar to Windows. Both Gnome and KDE run atop X.

FC has the usual Unix shells like bash (default), sh, ksh, csh, tcsh ... and if you need

to connect to your host, there are several 3270 emulator available, for X and also text-mode.

Two components which do not mix well with FC are Java 7 (1.7.0x) and Oracle RDBMS 11g.

For Java, stay with the 1.6 series until the problems of 1.7 are fixed. If you need to use  the RDBMS

besides PG then FC is not your OS. Instead, look at what systems they (Oracle) "support".

I hope this helps you with your decision.

Thanks to all

Sent from Samsung mobile

Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Wed, Feb 29, 2012 at 3:58 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Note that Ubuntu also comes in a GUI free server edition as well.  I
>> can definitely state that Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server edition is rock
>> solid stable for the hardware I've run it on (48 core AMD and 40 core
>> Intel machines with LSI, Arecam and 3Ware cards)
>
>Ubuntu 9.10 isn't LTS, but it's served me just fine. I have a server
>that's not been rebooted since July 2010 (including a database-using
>application process that has been running since boot, and is in
>constant use), and I don't feel like bringing it down to bring it up
>to date! Really, any of the main-stream Linuxes should be fine.
>
>Chris Angelico
>
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