Re: PostgreSQL for VAX on NetBSD/OpenBSD

[John Klos <john%ziaspace.com@localhost>]

Hi,

> Has anyone tried to build PostgreSQL for VAX lately?  If so, did it 
> compile?  Did you have to use --disable-spinlocks to get it to compile? 
> If it did compile, can you actually run it, and does it pass the 
> regression tests and work as expected?  Would you be willing to work 
> with the PostgreSQL to ensure continuing support for this platform, or 
> does that seem not worthwhile for whatever reason?

I've compiled postgresql93-client and postgresql93-server from pkgsrc on a 
VAX running NetBSD 6.1.4. The initial launch didn't like the default stack 
limit:

/etc/rc.d/pgsql start
Initializing PostgreSQL databases.
LOG:  invalid value for parameter "max_stack_depth": 100
DETAIL:  "max_stack_depth" must not exceed 0kB.
HINT:  Increase the platform's stack depth limit via "ulimit -s" or local 
equivalent.
FATAL:  failed to initialize max_stack_depth to 100
child process exited with exit code 1
initdb: removing data directory "/usr/local/pgsql/data"
pg_ctl: database system initialization failed


I unlimited and tried again. The pgsql process showed it was using 146 
megabytes of memory while initializing, then got as far as:

/etc/rc.d/pgsql start
Initializing PostgreSQL databases.

WARNING: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections
You can change this by editing pg_hba.conf or using the option -A, or
--auth-local and --auth-host, the next time you run initdb.
Starting pgsql.

Then the machine paniced. The serial console showed:

panic: usrptmap space leakage
cpu0: Begin traceback...
panic: usrptmap space leakage
Stack traceback :
         Process is executing in user space.
cpu0: End traceback...

dump to dev 9,1 not possible


It does compile and initialize, so the VAX code does work. However, 
considering how much memory it uses, I wonder how many people would 
actually use it. I did run Apache / MySQL / PHP on a VAXstation 4000/60 
not long ago, but MySQL takes way too much memory, too. Don't even get me 
started on how memory PHP uses - someone has to write some good weblog 
software in C one of these days...

John