Thread: Linux Distribution Preferences?

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux
distributionfor a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and
UbuntuLTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought. 

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@optionshouse.com



______________________________________________

See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ for terms and conditions related to this email

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@optionshouse.com



______________________________________________

See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ for terms and conditions related to this email

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the plague.


Cheers,
Gavin

On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
> I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
> RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the plague.

I happen to be doing my own research on this matter.  I tend to lean
more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there
seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be
easier to get solid support or advice for those.  But I prefer Ubuntu
for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available
PPAs, ease of administration, etc...

Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most
familiar/comfortable managing.  I don't see much practical difference
between the distributions other than the versions of various software
that they ship with by default.  But that is usually rather easy to
change according to your needs anyway.

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning.  Can you
(or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe Ubuntu
should be avoided?

    - Chris

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 11:07 AM, Chris Ernst <cernst@zvelo.com> wrote:
> I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
> times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning.  Can you (or
> anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe Ubuntu should
> be avoided?

I switched from Ubuntu to Debian a while ago, mainly on account of the
desktop environment, but moving servers as well for consistency.
Ubuntu has its advantages. At the moment, I'm half way through
patching a Debian system to the latest kernel and a recent Upstart
(rather than sysvinit), but Ubuntu already comes with a fairly recent
kernel and Upstart is the default.

So far, I haven't seen any particular reason to detest Ubuntu or
Debian. Both of them quite happily run everything I want, although
once it's been a year or two since the OS release, there's a strong
tendency to build stuff from source rather than rely on the aptitude
repositories - the repos lag a bit. But I'm okay with that. Maybe it's
an issue for other situations, though, in which case it's a
recommendation for Ubuntu probably.

In terms of PostgreSQL, I've always been using the OpenSCG package,
and have had no problems whatsoever (9.1).

ChrisA

On Jan 13, 2013, at 10:27 AM, Shaun Thomas <sthomas@optionshouse.com> wrote:

> Hey guys,
>
> I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux
distributionfor a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and
UbuntuLTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought. 


Either would be fine. RHEL is a bit more Enterprisey - which is either good or bad, depending on your use case. They're
moreconservative with updates than Ubuntu - which is good for service stability, but can be painful when you're stuck
betweenusing ancient versions of some app or stepping into the minefield of third party repos. (CentOS is pretty much
justRHEL without support and without some of the management tools). 

Ubuntu LTS is solid, and has good support for running multiple Postgresql clusters simultaneously, which is very handy
ifyou're supporting multiple apps against the same database server, and they require different releases. I've been told
thatthey occasionally make incompatible changes across minor releases, which is Bad, but it's never happened anywhere
I'venoticed - I've no idea if it's an actual issue or "Well, back in the 2004 release, they…" folklore. 

I run both in production, both on VMs and real metal. I tend to use Ubuntu LTS for new installations just because I'm
marginallymore comfortable in the Ubuntu CLI environment, but there's really not much to choose between them. 

Cheers,
  Steve

On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:

I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the plague.

I happen to be doing my own research on this matter.  I tend to lean more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be easier to get solid support or advice for those.  But I prefer Ubuntu for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available PPAs, ease of administration, etc...

Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most familiar/comfortable managing.  I don't see much practical difference between the distributions other than the versions of various software that they ship with by default.  But that is usually rather easy to change according to your needs anyway.

I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning.  Can you (or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe Ubuntu should be avoided?

    - Chris

4 reasons:

1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that I found very useful in to Fedora.  Fortunately, I was allowed to revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by default.
   
   
2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and sponsored largely by Red Hat.  Especially as Red Hat is in the top ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is not significant.
   
   
3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and ant-privacy features features.
   
   
4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.
   

If I were to change from Fedora, I would probably go back to Debian.



Cheers,
Gavin

Ubuntu did the marketing for linux and many more. Some people are just haters. Can you tell us about upstart?

Sent from my LG Mobile

Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:

On 14/01/13 13:07, Chris Ernst wrote:
> On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>> I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
>> RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the
>> plague.
>
> I happen to be doing my own research on this matter.  I tend to lean
> more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there
> seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be
> easier to get solid support or advice for those. But I prefer Ubuntu
> for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available
> PPAs, ease of administration, etc...
>
> Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most
> familiar/comfortable managing.  I don't see much practical difference
> between the distributions other than the versions of various software
> that they ship with by default.  But that is usually rather easy to
> change according to your needs anyway.
>
> I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
> times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you
> (or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe
> Ubuntu should be avoided?
>
>     - Chris
>
>
>
4 reasons:

 1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
    that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
    I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
    revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
    default.

 2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
    they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
    sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
    ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
    not significant.

 3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
    ant-privacy features features.

 4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

If I were to change from Fedora, I would probably go back to Debian.



Cheers,
Gavin

Please don't top post, add your comments at the end as per the norm for
this group.

On 14/01/13 12:06, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO wrote:
> Ubuntu did the marketing for linux and many more. Some people are just haters. Can you tell us about upstart?
>
> Sent from my LG Mobile
>
> Gavin Flower <GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz> wrote:
>
> On 14/01/13 13:07, Chris Ernst wrote:
>> On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>>> I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS (or
>>> RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like the
>>> plague.
>> I happen to be doing my own research on this matter.  I tend to lean
>> more toward RHEL or CentOS for production servers just because there
>> seem to be more people using it in that capacity and it seem to be
>> easier to get solid support or advice for those. But I prefer Ubuntu
>> for my laptop mainly because of the size of the community, available
>> PPAs, ease of administration, etc...
>>
>> Ultimately, it seem to come down to what you are most
>> familiar/comfortable managing.  I don't see much practical difference
>> between the distributions other than the versions of various software
>> that they ship with by default.  But that is usually rather easy to
>> change according to your needs anyway.
>>
>> I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
>> times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning. Can you
>> (or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe
>> Ubuntu should be avoided?
>>
>>      - Chris
>>
>>
>>
> 4 reasons:
>
>   1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
>      that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
>      I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
>      revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
>      default.
>
>   2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
>      they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
>      sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
>      ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
>      not significant.
>
>   3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
>      ant-privacy features features.
>
>   4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.
>
> If I were to change from Fedora, I would probably go back to Debian.
>
>
>
> Cheers,
> Gavin
  I don't know much about 'upstart'  - Fedora uses systemd:
http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd


Cheers,
Gavin

On 01/13/2013 04:07 PM, Chris Ernst wrote:
> On 01/13/2013 03:44 PM, Gavin Flower wrote:
>
> I've seen the opinion of "avoid Ubuntu like the plague" expressed many
> times, but it is never followed up with any solid reasoning.  Can you
> (or anyone else) give specific details on exactly why you believe Ubuntu
> should be avoided?

My take is that you have to look at Ubuntu as two distinct lines of
distributions, desktop and server. I got into it for the desktop  and
stayed for the server. The "avoid like a plague" tag tends to apply to
the desktop line and to an extent is valid. Canonical seems to be
leading a parade of one on a new graphical look for the desktop. So if
you use the desktop version and follow the six month release cycle you
are in for a ride. You can avoid that somewhat by using a LTS desktop,
but the change will come and you will have to deal.

The server line on the other hand avoids the graphical desktop issue, so
it tends to be less 'interesting'. If you stick with the LTS releases
then it becomes even more stable. The nice part is that with PPAs you
can backport newer releases of software to older LTS releases. For
example and to get back on topic the Postgres PPA maintained by Martin Pitt:

https://launchpad.net/~pitti/+archive/postgresql

>
>      - Chris
>
>
>


--
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@gmail.com

Em 13/01/2013 16:27, Shaun Thomas escreveu:
> Hey guys,
>
> I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux
distributionfor a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and
UbuntuLTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought. 
>
> --
> Shaun Thomas
> OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
> 312-676-8870
> sthomas@optionshouse.com
>
>
>
> ______________________________________________
>
> See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ for terms and conditions related to this email
>
>
I do use CentOS 5 and 6 for servers - they run without any glitches in
decent servers. Don't use then on self made servers with
strange/alternative SATA Raid controlers, it is the hell on earth. Use
good hardware and you will be fine.
Check the HCL of RedHat Enterprise.

Edson

> I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat
> curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid
> PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between
> RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else
> thought.

We run CentOS (mixture of 5 and 6, but 6 in all newer installations).
I've never used Ubuntu so can't comment on it.
We get PG from the PGDG repository, after disabling the distribution's
PG installation in order to maintain tight control over the build/version.

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:06 PM, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO <olutayo@sadeeb.com> wrote:
> 4 reasons:
>
>  1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
>     that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
>     I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
>     revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
>     default.
>
>  2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
>     they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
>     sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
>     ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
>     not significant.
>
>  3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
>     ant-privacy features features.
>
>  4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

Not one of those is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu server for pgsql.
There are reasons to not use it, but those are not them.  I've run
PostgreSQL servers on Redhat (before RHEL existed and there was JUST
Redhat) 5.1, RHEL 4, 5 and 6, Debian Lenny and Squeeze, just one on an
old version of Suse, and on Ubuntu server 8.04LTS and 10.04LTS and
12.04LTS.

My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
easy commands.  RHEL is great for building a stable but not
necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
commercial support it IS top notch.  Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
same to me, from the command line, on a server.

The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
regressions for their initial LTS release.  I.e. they'll choose a
3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
til the LTS becomes stable.  This is especially problematic the first
6 to 12 months after an LTS release.  Ubuntu support is a pitiful
thing compared to RHEL support.  I've reported bugs for RHEL that were
fixed within weeks, or at least a workaround came out pretty quick.
I've reported LTS bugs that are now YEARS old and Canonical has done
NOTHING to fix them.  There's a bug in 10.04LTS workstation for
instance that meant you couldn't have > 1 profile for a given WAP.
Never fixed.  Only recommendation was to upgrade.  From an LTS.  sigh.

There are reasons TO use Ubuntu as well.  Of if you are running very
late model hardware you can't get good support from an older release,
and using a more recent, possibly not LTS release is a good way to get
best performance.  I have often installed a late model release like
11.10, to get support for odd / new / interesting / high performance
hardware, and then at a later date could update that platform to an
LTS release for stability.  Note that I often waited til a good 3 or 4
months after the next release before I even started testing it, let
alone upgrading to it.  Ubuntu often has fairly late model versions of
many packages like pgsql or php or whatever that more RHEL like
distros will not get due to their longer release cycles.  It's easier
to add a ppa: repo to debian or ubuntu than to add an RPM repo to RHEL
and I've found they're usually better maintained and / or more up to
date.

Simple answer of course is that there is no simple answer.

Frequently released / updated distros (fedora, ubuntu non-LTS, debian
beta and so on) are GREAT for doing initial development on, as once
the stable branch based on it comes out you'll be deploying against
something with a long stable release branch.  So the latest version of
Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and so on are on the server, as are the
latest, or nearly so, versions of pgsql and slony and other packages.

Long term distros (debian stable, Ubuntu LTS, RHEL) are all good for
deploying things on you don't need the latest and greatest hardware
support nor the absolute fastest performance but instead stability are
paramount.  When downtime costs you $10k a minute, using the latest
code is not always the best idea.

Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
another, you're probably best off exploiting it.  If 95% of all the
developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that.  If they work on windows,
find a new job if at all possible.

Em 14/01/2013 01:46, Scott Marlowe escreveu:
> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:06 PM, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO <olutayo@sadeeb.com> wrote:
>> 4 reasons:
>>
>>   1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found
>>      that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that
>>      I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to
>>      revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by
>>      default.
>>
>>   2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply
>>      they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and
>>      sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top
>>      ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is
>>      not significant.
>>
>>   3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and
>>      ant-privacy features features.
>>
>>   4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.
> Not one of those is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu server for pgsql.
> There are reasons to not use it, but those are not them.  I've run
> PostgreSQL servers on Redhat (before RHEL existed and there was JUST
> Redhat) 5.1, RHEL 4, 5 and 6, Debian Lenny and Squeeze, just one on an
> old version of Suse, and on Ubuntu server 8.04LTS and 10.04LTS and
> 12.04LTS.
>
> My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
> support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
> multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
> easy commands.  RHEL is great for building a stable but not
> necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
> commercial support it IS top notch.  Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
> same to me, from the command line, on a server.

Do you have any fact that support RHEL being slower than others?
I would like to improve our servers if we can get some ideas - so far,
we have tried Ubuntu LTS servers, and seems just as fast as RHEL for
PostgreSQL (tests made by issuing heavy queries).

Thanks,

Edson


>
> The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
> they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
> regressions for their initial LTS release.  I.e. they'll choose a
> 3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
> til the LTS becomes stable.  This is especially problematic the first
> 6 to 12 months after an LTS release.  Ubuntu support is a pitiful
> thing compared to RHEL support.  I've reported bugs for RHEL that were
> fixed within weeks, or at least a workaround came out pretty quick.
> I've reported LTS bugs that are now YEARS old and Canonical has done
> NOTHING to fix them.  There's a bug in 10.04LTS workstation for
> instance that meant you couldn't have > 1 profile for a given WAP.
> Never fixed.  Only recommendation was to upgrade.  From an LTS.  sigh.
>
> There are reasons TO use Ubuntu as well.  Of if you are running very
> late model hardware you can't get good support from an older release,
> and using a more recent, possibly not LTS release is a good way to get
> best performance.  I have often installed a late model release like
> 11.10, to get support for odd / new / interesting / high performance
> hardware, and then at a later date could update that platform to an
> LTS release for stability.  Note that I often waited til a good 3 or 4
> months after the next release before I even started testing it, let
> alone upgrading to it.  Ubuntu often has fairly late model versions of
> many packages like pgsql or php or whatever that more RHEL like
> distros will not get due to their longer release cycles.  It's easier
> to add a ppa: repo to debian or ubuntu than to add an RPM repo to RHEL
> and I've found they're usually better maintained and / or more up to
> date.
>
> Simple answer of course is that there is no simple answer.
>
> Frequently released / updated distros (fedora, ubuntu non-LTS, debian
> beta and so on) are GREAT for doing initial development on, as once
> the stable branch based on it comes out you'll be deploying against
> something with a long stable release branch.  So the latest version of
> Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and so on are on the server, as are the
> latest, or nearly so, versions of pgsql and slony and other packages.
>
> Long term distros (debian stable, Ubuntu LTS, RHEL) are all good for
> deploying things on you don't need the latest and greatest hardware
> support nor the absolute fastest performance but instead stability are
> paramount.  When downtime costs you $10k a minute, using the latest
> code is not always the best idea.
>
> Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
> another, you're probably best off exploiting it.  If 95% of all the
> developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
> If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that.  If they work on windows,
> find a new job if at all possible.
>
>

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 4:06 PM, SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO <olutayo@sadeeb.com> wrote:

4 reasons:
1. One place where I worked Ubuntu was standard, I tried it and found   that it lacked at least a couple of desktop features in GNOME 2 that   I found very useful into Fedora. Fortunately, I was allowed to   revert back to Fedora. Prior to that, I was using Fedora mainly by   default.
2. Twice I came across features that I liked and Ubuntu seemed to imply   they had done them, later I found the projects been initiated and   sponsored largely by Red Hat. Especially as Red Hat is in the top   ten contributors to the kernel, and the contribution of Ubuntu is   not significant.
3. Ubuntu distributions are now starting to be filled with crapware and   ant-privacy features features.
4. Ubuntu seems very good at collecting fanbois.

Not one of those is a good reason to avoid Ubuntu server for pgsql.
There are reasons to not use it, but those are not them.  I've run
PostgreSQL servers on Redhat (before RHEL existed and there was JUST
Redhat) 5.1, RHEL 4, 5 and 6, Debian Lenny and Squeeze, just one on an
old version of Suse, and on Ubuntu server 8.04LTS and 10.04LTS and
12.04LTS.

My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
easy commands.  RHEL is great for building a stable but not
necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
commercial support it IS top notch.  Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
same to me, from the command line, on a server.

The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
regressions for their initial LTS release.  I.e. they'll choose a
3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
til the LTS becomes stable.  This is especially problematic the first
6 to 12 months after an LTS release.  Ubuntu support is a pitiful
thing compared to RHEL support.  I've reported bugs for RHEL that were
fixed within weeks, or at least a workaround came out pretty quick.
I've reported LTS bugs that are now YEARS old and Canonical has done
NOTHING to fix them.  There's a bug in 10.04LTS workstation for
instance that meant you couldn't have > 1 profile for a given WAP.
Never fixed.  Only recommendation was to upgrade.  From an LTS.  sigh.

There are reasons TO use Ubuntu as well.  Of if you are running very
late model hardware you can't get good support from an older release,
and using a more recent, possibly not LTS release is a good way to get
best performance.  I have often installed a late model release like
11.10, to get support for odd / new / interesting / high performance
hardware, and then at a later date could update that platform to an
LTS release for stability.  Note that I often waited til a good 3 or 4
months after the next release before I even started testing it, let
alone upgrading to it.  Ubuntu often has fairly late model versions of
many packages like pgsql or php or whatever that more RHEL like
distros will not get due to their longer release cycles.  It's easier
to add a ppa: repo to debian or ubuntu than to add an RPM repo to RHEL
and I've found they're usually better maintained and / or more up to
date.

Simple answer of course is that there is no simple answer.

Frequently released / updated distros (fedora, ubuntu non-LTS, debian
beta and so on) are GREAT for doing initial development on, as once
the stable branch based on it comes out you'll be deploying against
something with a long stable release branch.  So the latest version of
Ruby, Perl, PHP, Python and so on are on the server, as are the
latest, or nearly so, versions of pgsql and slony and other packages.

Long term distros (debian stable, Ubuntu LTS, RHEL) are all good for
deploying things on you don't need the latest and greatest hardware
support nor the absolute fastest performance but instead stability are
paramount.  When downtime costs you $10k a minute, using the latest
code is not always the best idea.

Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
another, you're probably best off exploiting it.  If 95% of all the
developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that.  If they work on windows,
find a new job if at all possible.

I have zero experience of setting up Linux as a _PRODUCTION_ server.

If I had to support one myself, I would probably consider RHEL.  Anyhow, I would do some serious research before making a final decision.  Even if I had made such a decision a year ago, I would still need to reassess the situation if I had to do it again - things keep changing.

I would be very reluctant to choose an Apple or Microsoft O/S for a production server.


Cheers,
Gavin

On Mon, Jan 14, 2013 at 2:46 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com> wrote:
> Most importantly, if you've got LOTS of talent for one distro or
> another, you're probably best off exploiting it.  If 95% of all the
> developers and ops crew run Ubuntu or Debian, stick to one of them.
> If they favor Fedora / RHEL stick to that.  If they work on windows,
> find a new job if at all possible.

+1. It's the little things that make the difference; I can casually
switch across from any of our client boxes to any of our servers,
because they ALL run Debian Squeeze. And my home boxes and my personal
server are also all either Debian Squeeze or some flavour of Ubuntu.
Keep things as similar as possible and you avoid wasting time over
trivialities like whether you can run ifconfig without becoming root
first, or which shells and scripting languages you have available (for
me, Python, bash, and Pike cover all my normal needs). Downtime costs
you, yes, but also, don't keep your developers waiting, child! Why,
their time is worth a thousand pounds a minute (in 1871 currency).

And +1 to the last comment, too :)

ChrisA

On 2013-01-14 00:44, Gavin Flower wrote:
> On 14/01/13 07:27, Shaun Thomas wrote:
>
>> Hey guys,
>>
>> I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat
>> curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid
>> PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between
>> RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else
>> thought.
>>
>> --
>> Shaun Thomas
>> OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
>> 312-676-8870
>> sthomas@optionshouse.com
>>
>> ______________________________________________
>>
>> See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ [1] for terms and
>> conditions related to this email
>  I would tend use Fedora for development, but would consider CentOS
> (or RHEL, if we had the budget) for production - I avoid Ubuntu like
> the plague.
>
>  Cheers,
>  Gavin
>
>
> Links:
> ------
> [1] http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/


I use Slackware and for me it's the perfect one. Some words are
rotating in my mind:
There is no good or bad linux, exists only one that which you know and
can work.

Cheers,
Hristo

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 8:54 PM, Edson Richter <edsonrichter@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Em 14/01/2013 01:46, Scott Marlowe escreveu:
>>
>> My preference personally is for debian based distros since they
>> support the rather more elegant pg wrappers that allow you to run
>> multiple versions and multiple clusters of those versions with very
>> easy commands.  RHEL is great for building a stable but not
>> necessarily ultra faster server, and if you can afford their
>> commercial support it IS top notch.  Debian and Ubuntu feel much the
>> same to me, from the command line, on a server.
>
>
> Do you have any fact that support RHEL being slower than others?
> I would like to improve our servers if we can get some ideas - so far, we
> have tried Ubuntu LTS servers, and seems just as fast as RHEL for PostgreSQL
> (tests made by issuing heavy queries).

It's not that RHEL is real slow.  But in a lot of orgnizations you
might be running a 3 or 4 year old release, which may or may not be
real fast on newer hardware.  This isn't just RHEL, it's any old
release.  A lot of older kernels don't get the best of performance out
of numa or late model RAID controllers and so on.  OTOH they're often
very stable.  If RHEL5 is say 10% slower than the latest Fedora
release, that's likely a fair tradeoff of stability and support versus
performance.  I've been working with an older Debian release lately
and it's definitely quite a bit slower than ubuntu 12.04 on the same
biggish iron hardware.

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 8:27 PM, Shaun Thomas <sthomas@optionshouse.com> wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux distribution for a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and Ubuntu LTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought.

Find the one that suits *you* (or rather your employer/client) and use that ;)
 

We can debate the pros and cons of each and every distro, and in the end it'll be the one that suits your (or your client/employer's) needs and makes you (or your client/employer) happy that'll win the battle.

In the bigger enterprises, RHEL and SuSE typically wins.

As you go down the Centos/Fedora/Ubuntu/Debians start to become more prevalent (license costs etc.)

The questions you'll need to ask and investigate:

1) Do I want license/support that I can pay somebody to look into my OS troubles?

2) How "active" is the community for this distro?

3) Which distros are the people around you using? (ie. replacement/backups/etc.)

4) Do you want bleeding/leading/stable/old releases?

5) Can you compile from source for this?

6) What OSes are your hosting/etc. supporting? (for the servers on the net out there)

7) Am I/company/client happy with this choice?

In essence...

It is that most irritating replies a highly paid consultant can give: "It depends!"

You have to decide what are the important criteria for your situation, the above list is a good starting point.  I would add 'security" & 'performance' requirements.  I am well aware, that if I had attempted to provide a list, that I would have missed some of the questions Shaun raised.  I am sure other people can add good questions as well.

A lot depends on your actual situation, and your intended use cases.

In a few months, I may have to go through the same exercise for real. :-(


Cheers,
Gavin

    Edson Richter wrote:

> Do you have any fact that support RHEL being slower than others?
> I would like to improve our servers if we can get some ideas - so far,
> we have tried Ubuntu LTS servers, and seems just as fast as RHEL for
> PostgreSQL (tests made by issuing heavy queries).

On Debian/Ubuntu, the default behavior is to have SSL enabled out
of the box, including for TCP connections to localhost.
That may be a good idea for remote access, but for local/LAN connections,
it can slow things down quite significantly . The problem is that people end
up using SSL without needing or knowing it.

Of course it can be turned off by using hostnossl for specific hosts in
pg_hba.conf, or globally with SSL=off in postgresql.conf, or using Unix
domain sockets for local connections, but people not well-versed in PG are
often not aware of this.

Other than that, the rest of the packaging is awesome, especially the layer
that make it possible to manage several simultaneous PG instances.

Best regards,
--
Daniel
PostgreSQL-powered mail user agent and storage: http://www.manitou-mail.org

Le lundi 14 janvier 2013 à 18:03 +0100, Daniel Verite a écrit :

> On Debian/Ubuntu, the default behavior is to have SSL enabled out
> of the box, including for TCP connections to localhost.

It is in Ubuntu, but not in Debian.

To the OP : I maintain three servers using Debian stable, each facing
the internet.  Lightly loaded (about 5 full time users each, using
specialized applications).

The only maintenance I have is to regularly do
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade.

The only downtime I had in over two years was due a forced bios upgrade
by the hosting service, and I have no formal training in server
administration. Debian stable certainly works.

--
Salutations, Vincent Veyron
http://gdlc.fr/logiciels
Applications de gestion des sinistres assurances et des contentieux

On 01/14/2013 04:19 PM, Vincent Veyron wrote:

> The only downtime I had in over two years was due a forced bios upgrade
> by the hosting service, and I have no formal training in server
> administration. Debian stable certainly works.

My personal server is on Debian too, with a similar uptime. But we
recently ran into this guy on our 12.04 Ubuntu systems:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1055222

I sent a message to [Performance] a while back suggesting disabling this
setting, and it's still true. But apparently if you set
sched_autogroup_enabled to 0 via sysctl, you won't be able to boot
because the kernel will panic before it finishes. Using the setting at
all makes reboots crash. And apparently, some tasks can occasionally get
into a bad state such that deallocating them causes a 0000 kernel oops
in set_task_cpu. That's hilariously bad, and all due to a merge from
upstream from a few months ago.

I probably wrongly attributed this to Ubuntu since it's the top result
in searching for 'sched_autogroup_enabled panic', but the real point was
that there doesn't seem to be any official support. We couldn't escalate
this problem to anyone anywhere, except by tagging the bug report or
opening our own.

Even calling canonical to ask about buying a support contract got us an
automated "We'll contact you within two business days" response, which
isn't exactly ideal. So we're strongly considering RHEL, because at
least they would call us back, and would give us some small amount of
peace knowing we could maybe get some assistance since we don't exactly
have a kernel dev on staff to find things like this.

We did figure it out eventually, but it took a couple hours to figure
out why the machines wouldn't boot, and all weekend to fully isolate the
problem as the cause of the other crashes.

So of course, we had to ask. I know this could have (and has, in my
experience) happen to any distro, but it just seems more... prevalent in
Ubuntu.

Then again, our older RHEL systems crashed like it was their job when we
were using our onboard Broadcom NICs. Maybe we're expecting too much.

--
Shaun Thomas
OptionsHouse | 141 W. Jackson Blvd. | Suite 500 | Chicago IL, 60604
312-676-8870
sthomas@optionshouse.com

______________________________________________

See http://www.peak6.com/email_disclaimer/ for terms and conditions related to this email

> Hey guys,
>
> I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux
distributionfor a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and
UbuntuLTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought. 

We were on dedicated FreeBSD servers since FreeBSD 4/5 w/ PostgreSQL 7/8.

Then, when the cloud servers came and Rackspace had no FreeBSD, we changed to Debian.

Since Rackspace have FreeBSD, we are on FreeBSD 9 w/ PostgreSQL 9.

Nearly 200 GB database, 4 CPU cores, 8 GB RAM, some tables with more than 500m records, master w/ two slaves on
asynchronousstreaming replication. 

Zero trouble.

We like FreeBSD, because, like PostgreSQL, it is a solid thing and not glued together like Linux.

When forced on Linux we like Debian because it is so conservative (which can sometimes drive one crazy, especially if
oneneeds some cutting edge feature). 

T.

On 15.01.2013, at 00:28, Rich Shepard <rshepard@appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

> On Tue, 15 Jan 2013, T. E. Lawrence wrote:
>
>> When forced on Linux we like Debian because it is so conservative (which
>> can sometimes drive one crazy, especially if one needs some cutting edge
>> feature).
>
> T.
>
>  Take a look at Slackware, too. Well back from the bleeding edge, but
> that's available if you must. :-)
>
> Rich

Slackware is an interesting thing.

It is a distribution, as ancient as Debian, but far less known (at lest from the entrance of my cave).

Unfortunately I have never had the time to get to know it, but I know reliable people who think very high of it.

T.

Le lundi 14 janvier 2013 à 16:35 -0600, Shaun Thomas a écrit :

> My personal server is on Debian too, with a similar uptime. But we
> recently ran into this guy on our 12.04 Ubuntu systems:
>
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1055222
>

Ha, so you seem to need to use the X windows system, which I do not use
on my servers, so I can't speak for that.


> Even calling canonical to ask about buying a support contract got us an
> automated "We'll contact you within two business days" response, which
> isn't exactly ideal. So we're strongly considering RHEL, because at
> least they would call us back, and would give us some small amount of
> peace knowing we could maybe get some assistance since we don't exactly
> have a kernel dev on staff to find things like this.


I understand the reasoning; but I wonder : would it make sense for you
to pick one of the well known systems mentionned above thread, with a
specialist(*) catering to your installation/maintenance needs, and then
have another different one as a standby backup, ready to take over in
case of need?

I'm asking this because I try to find a way out of the 'big corporation
only talking to the big corporation' paradigm.

(* : typically a linux nerd, with long hair, a beard and shorts, who
knows his stuff; not a corporate drone)

--
Salutations, Vincent Veyron
http://gdlc.fr/logiciels
Applications de gestion des sinistres assurances et des contentieux

    Vincent Veyron wrote:

>
> > On Debian/Ubuntu, the default behavior is to have SSL enabled out
> > of the box, including for TCP connections to localhost.
>
> It is in Ubuntu, but not in Debian.

No, I've seen it a number of times with Debian. pg_createcluster will enable
SSL in postgresql.conf if it finds usable certificates under /etc/ssl.
When it doesn't, it's because of an antiquated version of postgresql-common,
or lack of certificates, or non-standard permissions to them.

More generally, Ubuntu vs Debian is not relevant for Postgres packages, they
are essentially identical at comparable version levels.

Best regards,
--
Daniel
PostgreSQL-powered mail user agent and storage: http://www.manitou-mail.org

Le mardi 15 janvier 2013 à 12:54 +0100, Daniel Verite a écrit :
>     Vincent Veyron wrote:
>
> >
> > > On Debian/Ubuntu, the default behavior is to have SSL enabled out
> > > of the box, including for TCP connections to localhost.
> >
> > It is in Ubuntu, but not in Debian.
>
> No, I've seen it a number of times with Debian. pg_createcluster will enable
> SSL in postgresql.conf if it finds usable certificates under /etc/ssl.
> When it doesn't, it's because of an antiquated version of postgresql-common,
> or lack of certificates, or non-standard permissions to them.
>

I stand corrected! You appear to be right, I should have checked my
notes :

#edit /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/postgresql.conf
#ssl=true

after upgrading from 8.3

Sorry about that.

--
Salutations, Vincent Veyron
http://gdlc.fr/logiciels
Applications de gestion des sinistres assurances et des contentieux

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 4:54 AM, Vincent Veyron <vv.lists@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> Le lundi 14 janvier 2013 à 16:35 -0600, Shaun Thomas a écrit :
>
>> My personal server is on Debian too, with a similar uptime. But we
>> recently ran into this guy on our 12.04 Ubuntu systems:
>>
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1055222
>>
>
> Ha, so you seem to need to use the X windows system, which I do not use
> on my servers, so I can't speak for that.

I don't see how that shows the previous poster needs X Windows.

Le mardi 15 janvier 2013 à 07:52 -0700, Scott Marlowe a écrit :
> On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 4:54 AM, Vincent Veyron <vv.lists@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> > Le lundi 14 janvier 2013 à 16:35 -0600, Shaun Thomas a écrit :
> >
> >> My personal server is on Debian too, with a similar uptime. But we
> >> recently ran into this guy on our 12.04 Ubuntu systems:
> >>
> >> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/1055222
> >>
> >
> > Ha, so you seem to need to use the X windows system, which I do not use
> > on my servers, so I can't speak for that.
>
> I don't see how that shows the previous poster needs X Windows.

Admittedly inferred from reading this thread :

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/9069/benefiting-of-sched-autogroup-enabled-on-the-desktop

and the fact that the systems were turned off, so not online servers but
workstations.

I might have been jumping to conclusions (I did write seem to need)

--
Salutations, Vincent Veyron
http://gdlc.fr/logiciels
Applications de gestion des sinistres assurances et des contentieux

On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 08:46:58PM -0700, Scott Marlowe wrote:
> The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
> they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
> regressions for their initial LTS release.  I.e. they'll choose a
> 3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
> til the LTS becomes stable.  This is especially problematic the first
> 6 to 12 months after an LTS release.

This really sums it up for me.  Do you need the most recent kernel with
all the performance enhancements and new hardware support, and if so,
are you willing to accept frequent updates and breakage as the bugs are
fixed?

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + It's impossible for everything to be true. +

On Tue, Jan 15, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 08:46:58PM -0700, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>> The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
>> they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
>> regressions for their initial LTS release.  I.e. they'll choose a
>> 3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
>> til the LTS becomes stable.  This is especially problematic the first
>> 6 to 12 months after an LTS release.
>
> This really sums it up for me.  Do you need the most recent kernel with
> all the performance enhancements and new hardware support, and if so,
> are you willing to accept frequent updates and breakage as the bugs are
> fixed?

Yeah.  If you just started development and expect to deploy in 6 to 12
months time it's pretty acceptable.  If the distro's been out a year
it's ok.  If you already have a solid and reliable infrastructure,
then you should be doing a LOT of stress testing before using a new
distro.

> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 08:46:58PM -0700, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>> The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
>> they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
>> regressions for their initial LTS release.  I.e. they'll choose a
>> 3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
>> til the LTS becomes stable.  This is especially problematic the first
>> 6 to 12 months after an LTS release.

I wouldn't call it a reason not to use Ubuntu, but a reason why you
might want to use the previous LTS release. The kernel chosen needs to
be supported for 5 years, yet remain stable enough for the supported
application releases to be supported for 5 years.


On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 4:02 AM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

> This really sums it up for me.  Do you need the most recent kernel with
> all the performance enhancements and new hardware support, and if so,
> are you willing to accept frequent updates and breakage as the bugs are
> fixed?

I hear lots of people like to wait for the .1 release of the LTS for
this sort of reason. It seems a common policy for applications too,
steering clear of .0 releases in favor of waiting for the initial
patch release.

--
Stuart Bishop <stuart@stuartbishop.net>
http://www.stuartbishop.net/

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stuart Bishop" <stuart@stuartbishop.net>
To: "Bruce Momjian" <bruce@momjian.us>
Cc: "Scott Marlowe" <scott.marlowe@gmail.com>, "SUNDAY A. OLUTAYO" <olutayo@sadeeb.com>, "Gavin Flower"
<GavinFlower@archidevsys.co.nz>,"Chris Ernst" <cernst@zvelo.com>, pgsql-general@postgresql.org 
Sent: Wednesday, January 16, 2013 1:00:56 PM
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Linux Distribution Preferences?

> On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 08:46:58PM -0700, Scott Marlowe wrote:
>> The reasons to NOT use ubuntu under PostgreSQL are primarily that 1:
>> they often choose a pretty meh grade kernel with performance
>> regressions for their initial LTS release.  I.e. they'll choose a
>> 3.4.0 kernel over a very stable 3.2.latest kernel, and then patch away
>> til the LTS becomes stable.  This is especially problematic the first
>> 6 to 12 months after an LTS release.

I wouldn't call it a reason not to use Ubuntu, but a reason why you
might want to use the previous LTS release. The kernel chosen needs to
be supported for 5 years, yet remain stable enough for the supported
application releases to be supported for 5 years.


On Wed, Jan 16, 2013 at 4:02 AM, Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> wrote:

> This really sums it up for me.  Do you need the most recent kernel with
> all the performance enhancements and new hardware support, and if so,
> are you willing to accept frequent updates and breakage as the bugs are
> fixed?

I hear lots of people like to wait for the .1 release of the LTS for
this sort of reason. It seems a common policy for applications too,
steering clear of .0 releases in favor of waiting for the initial
patch release.

--
Stuart Bishop <stuart@stuartbishop.net>
http://www.stuartbishop.net/

I always wait for one year to lapse before upgrading to the latest LTS



Thanks,

Sunday Olutayo

Le dimanche 13 janvier 2013 à 18:27 +0000, Shaun Thomas a écrit :

> I'm not sure the last time I saw this discussion, but I was somewhat curious: what would be your ideal Linux
distributionfor a nice solid PostgreSQL installation? We've kinda bounced back and forth between RHEL, CentOS, and
UbuntuLTS, so I was wondering what everyone else thought. 
>

A few interesting comments for you in this discussion, maybe :

http://linux.slashdot.org/story/13/01/17/160249/centos-59-released



--
Salutations, Vincent Veyron
http://marica.fr/site/demonstration
Logiciel de gestion des contentieux juridiques et des sinistres d'assurance