Thread: Roadmap for Postgres on AIX

Hi guys,

What is the road map for Postgres on the AIX platform? I understand that the pg build farm contains an AIX 5.3 server; are there any plans to upgrade to 6.1 and 7.1?

Our servers run on AIX and we are evaluating using Postgres as the RDBMS. Part of my evaluation is understanding where the pg team is headed with AIX, and if it is considered a supported platform for the foreseeable future.

I have been building postgres for my companies inhouse use on AIX 6.1 without any issues.   I am using IBM XLC to compile it, and I'm building it with plpgsql and plperl support, but not any of the others (we don't use them).   I had to compile my own zlib and readline libraries to go with it, which I static link to simplify deployment.    because I link it with readline, my builds are GPL tainted and can't be distributed as-is, anyways, my employers policies would not allow me to do that. 

I use a few tools from the IBM AIX Linux Toolkit for convenience, notably gtar, gmake, and wget.   XLC is installed in /usr/vac

my build script looks something like...



this tarball is what we use on our production servers, we run postgres from /opt/pgsql91/...

-- 
john r pierce                                      37N 122W
somewhere on the middle of the left coast

Wasim Arif <wasimarif@gmail.com> writes:
> What is the road map for Postgres on the AIX platform? I understand that
> the pg build farm contains an AIX 5.3 server; are there any plans to
> upgrade to 6.1 and 7.1?

The reason there's an AIX 5.3 buildfarm member is that someone cares
enough about preserving portability to that platform to provide a
buildfarm member.  If you're worried about other AIX releases, I suggest
you do likewise.  It's not a huge burden.  Basic info about it is here:
http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/register-form.pl

By and large, our approach to AIX is the same as to any other platform:
we'll support it as long as users of the platform provide testing and
any necessary portability fixes.  That burden might fall more directly
on you, as one of a relatively small number of users, than it would on
somebody using say Linux or BSD.  But as long as you are willing to do
some of the work you need not fear that we're planning to abandon you.

(FWIW, I believe there was a more-recent AIX version in the buildfarm
till recently.  Don't know why its owner stopped running it.)

            regards, tom lane

Thanks for the detailed and quick response guys.

-Wasim.

On 04/17/2013 07:45 PM, Thomas Munro wrote:
> On 19 March 2013 01:00, Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us
> <mailto:tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>> wrote:
>
>     Wasim Arif <wasimarif@gmail.com <mailto:wasimarif@gmail.com>> writes:
>     > What is the road map for Postgres on the AIX platform? I
>     understand that
>     > the pg build farm contains an AIX 5.3 server; are there any plans to
>     > upgrade to 6.1 and 7.1?
>
>     The reason there's an AIX 5.3 buildfarm member is that someone cares
>     enough about preserving portability to that platform to provide a
>     buildfarm member.  If you're worried about other AIX releases, I suggest
>     you do likewise.  It's not a huge burden.  Basic info about it is here:
>     http://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/register-form.pl
>
>     By and large, our approach to AIX is the same as to any other platform:
>     we'll support it as long as users of the platform provide testing and
>     any necessary portability fixes.  That burden might fall more directly
>     on you, as one of a relatively small number of users, than it would on
>     somebody using say Linux or BSD.  But as long as you are willing to do
>     some of the work you need not fear that we're planning to abandon you.
>
>
> For those organisations running PostgreSQL on AIX, I wonder if it would
> be possible for a member of 'IBM PartnerWorld' to use the free 'Virtual
> Loaner' programme[1] to set up build farm members on a range of AIX
> versions and POWER chips.
>
> My employer is in this category, but I am not in a position to
> contribute company time patches or resources currently (although that
> might change).  From memory we've had to make a couple of local tweaks
> to makefiles for our particular versions of things, although we are
> mostly focussed on clients on AIX, not the server.  But perhaps some of
> the other (rare!) AIX users from the list might be able to look into VPL
> farm animals?
>
> [1] http://www-304.ibm.com/partnerworld/wps/pub/systems/vlp/index

hmm looks kinda interesting and better POWER coverage on the BF would be
nice - if your company cannot donate time, maybe they could get someone
from the community access to those systems for setting up bf animals?


Stefan

Hi,

I got this page by accident trying find more info on tests EnterpriseDB did
with PostgressSQL Power Linux.

Anyway as I work IBM Power sales rep for Finland myself, please sent me
little bit more info on what kind of test you have in mind. (Do you just
want few core's to test it works / or bigger instance for performance
testing? For how long?)

I can see when we would have test machine available trough partner world.

If you don't want to ping your specific test scenario on public forum please
sent me a mail kimmo.hintikka@ie.ibm.com or ping on  linkedin
<http://www.linkedin.com/in/kimmohintikka>

Otherwise just answer here and I get back to you.



--
View this message in context:
http://postgresql.1045698.n5.nabble.com/Roadmap-for-Postgres-on-AIX-tp5748857p5765794.html
Sent from the PostgreSQL - general mailing list archive at Nabble.com.