[Pkg-postgresql-private] Re: Bug#234017: postgresql: Please chattr +A the wal-directory

[Oliver Elphick]

On Tue, 2004-02-24 at 17:08, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Hi!
> 
> On 2004-02-21  8:35 +0100, Daniel Migowski wrote:
> > Package: postgresql
> > Version: 7.4.1-1
> > Severity: wishlist
> > 
> > As most speed improvement guides state, it is a good idea to 
> > 
> >     chattr -R +A /var/lib/postgres/data/
> > 
> > .. This will stop the kernel from writing access times to disk. 
> 
> This might hamper forensic analysis after a break-in, but certainly
> will improve the performance a bit. Does anybody see any problem when
> doing this? Shall I ask on d-devel before?

Presumably this would have to be put in initdb, or do you envisage its
being added to the postinst script?  The former would be better for
ensuring consistency; however it would involve another change from
upstream behaviour, which we should be reluctant to do.

If you think about the pattern of writes and buffering, I am not
convinced that this would make a lot of difference.  I think I should
like to see some comparisons of update times on, say, the regression
tests, to see whether it would be worthwhile.  It would also be worth
raising the matter on pgsql-performance; it seems to me to be noteworthy
that no-one has ever made the suggestion there.

Oliver