Thread: Red Hat Policies Regarding PostgreSQL

Michael Convey <smconvey@gmail.com> writes:
> Due to policies for Red Hat family distributions, the PostgreSQL
> installation will not be enabled for automatic start or have the database
> initialized automatically.

> To which policies are they referring? Licensing, security, or other?​

Packaging policy: daemons shall not run merely by virtue of having been
installed.  Otherwise, if you install a boatload of software without
checking each package, you'd have a boatload of probably-unwanted and
possibly-incorrectly-configured daemons running.  Which is a performance
problem and likely a security hazard too.

It's a good policy IMO (though I used to work there so no doubt I've just
drunk too much Red Hat koolaid).

            regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:
> Michael Convey <smconvey@gmail.com> writes:
>> Due to policies for Red Hat family distributions, the PostgreSQL
>> installation will not be enabled for automatic start or have the database
>> initialized automatically.
>
>> To which policies are they referring? Licensing, security, or other?​
>
> Packaging policy: daemons shall not run merely by virtue of having been
> installed.  Otherwise, if you install a boatload of software without
> checking each package, you'd have a boatload of probably-unwanted and
> possibly-incorrectly-configured daemons running.  Which is a performance
> problem and likely a security hazard too.
>
> It's a good policy IMO (though I used to work there so no doubt I've just
> drunk too much Red Hat koolaid).

Seems reasonable. In fact somewhat better than current KDE as in e.g.
Debian "Jessie", which embeds a copy of MySQL whether the the user wants
to use it or not.

--
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]