Thread: postmaster vs. postgres
What is the difference between the postmaster binary and the postgres binary? Does the postmaster act as nothing more than a multiplexor for postgres processes or something? Chris
Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > What is the difference between the postmaster binary and the postgres > binary? Does the postmaster act as nothing more than a multiplexor for > postgres processes or something? The binaries are the same -- one is a symlink to the other. This allows us to fork postgres children of the postmaster with no exec(). The binary does read argv[0] and behaves differently depending on which binary name it was called under. -- Bruce Momjian | http://candle.pha.pa.us pgman@candle.pha.pa.us | (610) 853-3000+ If your life is a hard drive, | 830 Blythe Avenue + Christ can be your backup. | Drexel Hill, Pennsylvania19026
"Christopher Kings-Lynne" <chriskl@familyhealth.com.au> writes: > What is the difference between the postmaster binary and the postgres > binary? Does the postmaster act as nothing more than a multiplexor for > postgres processes or something? None, and yup. There is some stuff about this at http://developer.postgresql.org/osdn.php (I recommend the "tour" slides ;-)). I thought we had some graphics about this in the standard documentation, too, but am not finding it right now. regards, tom lane
On Wed, 9 Jan 2002, Christopher Kings-Lynne wrote: > What is the difference between the postmaster binary and the postgres > binary? Does the postmaster act as nothing more than a multiplexor for > postgres processes or something? The postmaster 'binary' is a symbolic link to postgres. In reality, the naming convention corresponds programmatically to what you have described. If the invokation is done via 'postmaster' PostmasterMain() is executed, otherwise it is assumed that a standalone backend s executed. Gavin