mirror of
https://github.com/postgres/postgres.git
synced 2025-10-29 22:49:41 +03:00
540 lines
24 KiB
HTML
540 lines
24 KiB
HTML
<HTML>
|
|
<HEAD>
|
|
<TITLE>The POSTGRES95 User Manual - ADMINISTERING POSTGRES</TITLE>
|
|
</HEAD>
|
|
|
|
<BODY>
|
|
|
|
<font size=-1>
|
|
<A HREF="pg95user.html">[ TOC ]</A>
|
|
<A HREF="rules.html">[ Previous ]</A>
|
|
<A HREF="refs.html">[ Next ]</A>
|
|
</font>
|
|
<HR>
|
|
<H1>15. ADMINISTERING POSTGRES</H1>
|
|
<HR>
|
|
In this section, we will discuss aspects of POSTGRES
|
|
that are of interest to those who make extensive use of
|
|
POSTGRES, or who are the site administrator for a group
|
|
of POSTGRES users.
|
|
|
|
<H2>15.1. Frequent Tasks</H2>
|
|
Here we will briefly discuss some procedures that you
|
|
should be familiar with in managing any POSTGRES
|
|
installation.
|
|
|
|
<H3>15.1.1. Starting the Postmaster</H3>
|
|
If you did not install POSTGRES exactly as described in
|
|
the installation instructions, you may have to perform
|
|
some additional steps before starting the postmaster
|
|
process.
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>Even if you were not the person who installed POSTGRES,
|
|
you should understand the installation
|
|
instructions. The installation instructions explain
|
|
some important issues with respect to where POSTGRES
|
|
places some important files, proper settings for
|
|
environment variables, etc. that may vary from one
|
|
version of POSTGRES to another.<p>
|
|
<LI>You must start the postmaster process with the userid
|
|
that owns the installed database files. In most
|
|
cases, if you have followed the installation
|
|
instructions, this will be the user "<B>postgres</B>". If
|
|
you do not start the postmaster with the right userid,
|
|
the backend servers that are started by the
|
|
postmaster will not be able to read the data.<p>
|
|
<LI>Make sure that <CODE>/usr/local/postgres95/bin</CODE> is in your
|
|
shell command path, because the postmaster will use
|
|
your <B>PATH</B> to locate POSTGRES commands.<p>
|
|
<LI>Remember to set the environment variable <B>PGDATA</B> to
|
|
the directory where the POSTGRES databases are
|
|
installed. (This variable is more fully explained
|
|
in the POSTGRES installation instructions.)<p>
|
|
<LI>If you do start the postmaster using non-standard
|
|
options, such as a different TCP port number, remember
|
|
to tell all users so that they can set their
|
|
<B>PGPORT</B> environment variable correctly.<p>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
|
|
<H3>15.1.2. Shutting Down the Postmaster</H3>
|
|
If you need to halt the postmaster process, you can use
|
|
the <B>UNIX</B> <B>kill(1)</B> command. Some people habitually use
|
|
the <B>-9</B> or <B>-KILL</B> option; this should never be necessary
|
|
and we do not recommend that you do this, as the postmaster
|
|
will be unable to free its various shared
|
|
resources, its child processes will be unable to exit
|
|
gracefully, etc.
|
|
|
|
<H3>15.1.3. Adding and Removing Users</H3>
|
|
The createuser and destroyuser commands enable and disable
|
|
access to POSTGRES by specific users on the host
|
|
system.
|
|
|
|
<H3>15.1.4. Periodic Upkeep</H3>
|
|
The vacuum command should be run on each database periodically.
|
|
This command processes deleted instances<A HREF="#9"><font size=-1>[9]</font></A>
|
|
and, more importantly, updates the system statistics
|
|
concerning the size of each class. If these statistics
|
|
are permitted to become out-of-date and inaccurate, the
|
|
POSTGRES query optimizer may make extremely poor decisions
|
|
with respect to query evaluation strategies.
|
|
Therefore, we recommend running vacuum every night or
|
|
so (perhaps in a script that is executed by the <B>UNIX</B>
|
|
<B>cron(1)</B> or <B>at(1)</B> commands).
|
|
Do frequent backups. That is, you should either back
|
|
up your database directories using the POSTGRES copy
|
|
command and/or the <B>UNIX</B> <B>dump(1)</B> or <B>tar(1)</B> commands.
|
|
You may think, "Why am I backing up my database? What
|
|
about crash recovery?" One side effect of the POSTGRES
|
|
"no overwrite" storage manager is that it is also a "no
|
|
log" storage manager. That is, the database log stores
|
|
only abort/commit data, and this is not enough information
|
|
to recover the database if the storage medium
|
|
(disk) or the database files are corrupted! In other
|
|
words, if a disk block goes bad or POSTGRES happens to
|
|
corrupt a database file, you cannot recover that file.
|
|
This can be disastrous if the file is one of the shared
|
|
catalogs, such as pg_database.
|
|
|
|
<H3>15.1.5. Tuning</H3>
|
|
Once your users start to load a significant amount of
|
|
data, you will typically run into performance problems.
|
|
POSTGRES is not the fastest DBMS in the world, but many
|
|
of the worst problems encountered by users are due to
|
|
their lack of experience with any DBMS. Some general
|
|
tips include:
|
|
<OL>
|
|
<LI> Define indices over attributes that are commonly
|
|
used for qualifications. For example, if you
|
|
often execute queries of the form
|
|
|
|
<pre> SELECT * from EMP where salary < 5000
|
|
</pre>
|
|
then a B-tree index on the salary attribute will
|
|
probably be useful. If scans involving equality
|
|
are more common, as in
|
|
|
|
<pre> SELECT * from EMP where salary = 5000
|
|
</pre>
|
|
then you should consider defining a hash index
|
|
on salary. You can define both, though it will
|
|
use more disk space and may slow down updates a
|
|
bit. Scans using indices are much faster than
|
|
sequential scans of the entire class.<p>
|
|
<LI> Run the vacuum command a lot. This command
|
|
updates the statistics that the query optimizer
|
|
uses to make intelligent decisions; if the
|
|
statistics are inaccurate, the system will make
|
|
inordinately stupid decisions with respect to
|
|
the way it joins and scans classes.<p>
|
|
<LI> When specifying query qualfications (i.e., the
|
|
where part of the query), try to ensure that a
|
|
clause involving a constant can be turned into
|
|
one of the form range_variable operator constant, e.g.,
|
|
|
|
<pre> EMP.salary = 5000
|
|
</pre>
|
|
The POSTGRES query optimizer will only use an
|
|
index with a constant qualification of this
|
|
form. It doesn't hurt to write the clause as
|
|
|
|
<pre> 5000 = EMP.salary
|
|
</pre>
|
|
if the operator (in this case, =) has a commutator
|
|
operator defined so that POSTGRES can
|
|
rewrite the query into the desired form. However,
|
|
if such an operator does not exist, POSTGRES
|
|
will never consider the use of an index.<p>
|
|
<LI> When joining several classes together in one
|
|
query, try to write the join clauses in a
|
|
"chained" form, e.g.,
|
|
|
|
<pre> where A.a = B.b and B.b = C.c and ...
|
|
</pre>
|
|
Notice that relatively few clauses refer to a
|
|
given class and attribute; the clauses form a
|
|
linear sequence connecting the attributes, like
|
|
links in a chain. This is preferable to a query
|
|
written in a "star" form, such as
|
|
|
|
<pre> where A.a = B.b and A.a = C.c and ...
|
|
</pre>
|
|
Here, many clauses refer to the same class and
|
|
attribute (in this case, A.a). When presented
|
|
with a query of this form, the POSTGRES query
|
|
optimizer will tend to consider far more choices
|
|
than it should and may run out of memory.<p>
|
|
<LI> If you are really desperate to see what query
|
|
plans look like, you can run the postmaster with
|
|
the -d option and then run monitor with the -t
|
|
option. The format in which query plans will be
|
|
printed is hard to read but you should be able
|
|
to tell whether any index scans are being performed.<br>
|
|
</OL>
|
|
|
|
<H2>15.2. Infrequent Tasks</H2>
|
|
|
|
At some time or another, every POSTGRES site
|
|
administrator has to perform all of the following actions.
|
|
|
|
15.2.1. Cleaning Up After Crashes
|
|
The <B>postgres</B> server and the <B>postmaster</B> run as two
|
|
different processes. They may crash separately or
|
|
together. The housekeeping procedures required to fix
|
|
one kind of crash are different from those required to
|
|
fix the other.
|
|
The message you will usually see when the backend
|
|
server crashes is:
|
|
|
|
<pre> FATAL: no response from backend: detected in ...
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This generally means one of two things: there is a bug
|
|
in the POSTGRES server, or there is a bug in some user
|
|
code that has been dynamically loaded into POSTGRES.
|
|
You should be able to restart your application and
|
|
resume processing, but there are some considerations:
|
|
<OL>
|
|
<LI> POSTGRES usually dumps a core file (a snapshot
|
|
of process memory used for debugging) in the
|
|
database directory
|
|
<pre> /usr/local/postgres95/data/base/<database>/core
|
|
</pre>
|
|
on the server machine. If you don't want to try
|
|
to debug the problem or produce a stack trace to
|
|
report the bug to someone else, you can delete
|
|
this file (which is probably around 10MB).<p>
|
|
<LI> When one backend crashes in an uncontrolled way
|
|
(i.e., without calling its built-in cleanup
|
|
routines), the postmaster will detect this situation,
|
|
kill all running servers and reinitialize
|
|
the state shared among all backends (e.g., the
|
|
shared buffer pool and locks). If your server
|
|
crashed, you will get the "no response" message
|
|
shown above. If your server was killed because
|
|
someone else's server crashed, you will see the
|
|
following message:
|
|
|
|
<pre> I have been signalled by the postmaster.
|
|
Some backend process has died unexpectedly and possibly
|
|
corrupted shared memory. The current transaction was
|
|
aborted, and I am going to exit. Please resend the
|
|
last query. -- The postgres backend
|
|
</pre><br>
|
|
<LI> Sometimes shared state is not completely cleaned
|
|
up. Frontend applications may see errors of the
|
|
form:
|
|
|
|
<pre> WARN: cannot write block 34 of myclass [mydb] blind
|
|
</pre>
|
|
In this case, you should kill the postmaster and
|
|
restart it.<p>
|
|
<LI> When the system crashes while updating the system
|
|
catalogs (e.g., when you are creating a
|
|
class, defining an index, retrieving into a
|
|
class, etc.) the B-tree indices defined on the
|
|
catalogs are sometimes corrupted. The general
|
|
(and non-unique) symptom is that all queries
|
|
stop working. If you have tried all of the
|
|
above steps and nothing else seems to work, try
|
|
using the reindexdb command. If reindexdb succeeds
|
|
but things still don't work, you have
|
|
another problem; if it fails, the system catalogs
|
|
themselves were almost certainly corrupted
|
|
and you will have to go back to your backups.<p>
|
|
</OL>
|
|
The postmaster does not usually crash (it doesn't do
|
|
very much except start servers) but it does happen on
|
|
occasion. In addition, there are a few cases where it
|
|
encounters problems during the reinitialization of
|
|
shared resources. Specifically, there are race conditions
|
|
where the operating system lets the postmaster
|
|
free shared resources but then will not permit it to
|
|
reallocate the same amount of shared resources (even
|
|
when there is no contention).
|
|
You will typically have to run the ipcclean command if
|
|
system errors cause the postmaster to crash. If this
|
|
happens, you may find (using the UNIX ipcs(1) command)
|
|
that the "<B>postgres</B>" user has shared memory and/or
|
|
semaphores allocated even though no postmaster process
|
|
is running. In this case, you should run ipcclean as
|
|
the "<B>postgres</B>" user in order to deallocate these
|
|
resources. Be warned that all such resources owned by
|
|
the "<B>postgres</B>" user will be deallocated. If you have
|
|
multiple postmaster processes running on the same
|
|
machine, you should kill all of them before running
|
|
ipcclean (otherwise, they will crash on their own when
|
|
their shared resources are suddenly deallocated).
|
|
|
|
<H3>15.2.2. Moving Database Directories</H3>
|
|
By default, all POSTGRES databases are stored in
|
|
separate subdirectories under
|
|
<CODE>/usr/local/postgres95/data/base</CODE>.<A HREF="#10"><font size=-1>[10]</font></A> At some point, you
|
|
may find that you wish to move one or more databases to
|
|
another location (e.g., to a filesystem with more free
|
|
space).
|
|
If you wish to move all of your databases to the new
|
|
location, you can simply:
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>Kill the postmaster.<p>
|
|
<LI>Copy the entire data directory to the new location
|
|
(making sure that the new files are owned by user
|
|
"<B>postgres</B>").
|
|
|
|
<pre> % cp -rp /usr/local/postgres95/data /new/place/data
|
|
</pre><p>
|
|
<LI>Reset your PGDATA environment variable (as described
|
|
earlier in this manual and in the installation
|
|
instructions).
|
|
|
|
<pre> # using csh or tcsh...
|
|
% setenv PGDATA /new/place/data
|
|
|
|
# using sh, ksh or bash...
|
|
% PGDATA=/new/place/data; export PGDATA
|
|
|
|
</pre><p>
|
|
<LI>Restart the postmaster.
|
|
|
|
<pre> % postmaster &
|
|
</pre><p>
|
|
<LI>After you run some queries and are sure that the
|
|
newly-moved database works, you can remove the old
|
|
data directory.
|
|
<pre> % rm -rf /usr/local/postgres95/data
|
|
</pre><p>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
To install a single database in an alternate directory
|
|
while leaving all other databases in place, do the following:
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>Create the database (if it doesn't already exist)
|
|
using the createdb command. In the following steps
|
|
we will assume the database is named foo.<p>
|
|
<LI>Kill the postmaster.<p>
|
|
<LI>Copy the directory
|
|
<CODE>/usr/local/postgres95/data/base/foo</CODE> and its contents
|
|
to its ultimate destination. It should still be
|
|
owned by the "<B>postgres</B>" user.
|
|
|
|
<pre> % cp -rp /usr/local/postgres95/data/base/foo /new/place/foo
|
|
</pre>
|
|
<LI>Remove the directory
|
|
<CODE>/usr/local/postgres95/data/base/foo</CODE>:
|
|
|
|
<pre> % rm -rf /usr/local/postgres95/data/base/foo
|
|
</pre>
|
|
<LI>Make a symbolic link from
|
|
<CODE>/usr/local/postgres95/data/base</CODE> to the new directory:
|
|
|
|
<pre> % ln -s /new/place/foo /usr/local/postgres95/data/base/foo
|
|
</pre>
|
|
<LI>Restart the postmaster.
|
|
</UL>
|
|
<p>
|
|
<H3>15.2.3. Updating Databases</H3>
|
|
POSTGRES is a research system. In general, POSTGRES
|
|
may not retain the same binary format for the storage
|
|
of databases from release to release. Therefore, when
|
|
you update your POSTGRES software, you will probably
|
|
have to modify your databases as well. This is a common
|
|
occurrence with commercial database systems as
|
|
well; unfortunately, unlike commercial systems, POSTGRES
|
|
does not come with user-friendly utilities to make
|
|
your life easier when these updates occur.
|
|
In general, you must do the following to update your
|
|
databases to a new software release:
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>Extensions (such as user-defined types, functions,
|
|
aggregates, etc.) must be reloaded by re-executing
|
|
the <B>SQL CREATE</B> commands. See Appendix A for more
|
|
details.
|
|
<LI>Data must be dumped from the old classes into ASCII
|
|
files (using the <B>COPY</B> command), the new classes created
|
|
in the new database (using the <B>CREATE TABLE</B>
|
|
command), and the data reloaded from the ASCII files.
|
|
<LI>Rules and views must also be reloaded by
|
|
reexecuting the various CREATE commands.
|
|
</UL>
|
|
You should give any new release a "trial period"; in
|
|
particular, do not delete the old database until you
|
|
are satisfied that there are no compatibility problems
|
|
with the new software. For example, you do not want to
|
|
discover that a bug in a type's "input" (conversion
|
|
from ASCII) and "output" (conversion to ASCII) routines
|
|
prevents you from reloading your data after you have
|
|
destroyed your old databases! (This should be standard
|
|
procedure when updating any software package, but some
|
|
people try to economize on disk space without applying
|
|
enough foresight.)
|
|
|
|
<H2>15.3. Database Security</H2>
|
|
|
|
Most sites that use POSTGRES are educational or
|
|
research institutions and do not pay much attention to
|
|
security in their POSTGRES installations. If desired,
|
|
one can install POSTGRES with additional security
|
|
features. Naturally, such features come with additional
|
|
administrative overhead that must be dealt with.
|
|
|
|
<H3>15.3.1. Kerberos</H3>
|
|
POSTGRES can be configured to use the <B>MIT</B> <B>Kerberos</B> network
|
|
authentication system. This prevents outside
|
|
users from connecting to your databases over the network
|
|
without the correct authentication information.
|
|
<p>
|
|
<H2>15.4. Querying the System Catalogs</H2>
|
|
As an administrator (or sometimes as a plain user), you
|
|
want to find out what extensions have been added to a
|
|
given database. The queries listed below are "canned"
|
|
queries that you can run on any database to get simple
|
|
answers. Before executing any of the queries below, be
|
|
sure to execute the POSTGRES <B>vacuum</B> command. (The
|
|
queries will run much more quickly that way.) Also,
|
|
note that these queries are also listed in
|
|
<pre> /usr/local/postgres95/tutorial/syscat.sql
|
|
</pre>
|
|
so use cut-and-paste (or the <B>\i</B> command) instead of
|
|
doing a lot of typing.
|
|
This query prints the names of all database adminstrators
|
|
and the name of their database(s).
|
|
<pre> SELECT usename, datname
|
|
FROM pg_user, pg_database
|
|
WHERE usesysid = int2in(int4out(datdba))
|
|
ORDER BY usename, datname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all user-defined classes in the
|
|
database.
|
|
<pre> SELECT relname
|
|
FROM pg_class
|
|
WHERE relkind = 'r' -- not indices
|
|
and relname !~ '^pg_' -- not catalogs
|
|
and relname !~ '^Inv' -- not large objects
|
|
ORDER BY relname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all simple indices (i.e., those that
|
|
are not defined over a function of several attributes).
|
|
<pre> SELECT bc.relname AS class_name,
|
|
ic.relname AS index_name,
|
|
a.attname
|
|
FROM pg_class bc, -- base class
|
|
pg_class ic, -- index class
|
|
pg_index i,
|
|
pg_attribute a -- att in base
|
|
WHERE i.indrelid = bc.oid
|
|
and i.indexrelid = ic.oid
|
|
and i.indkey[0] = a.attnum
|
|
and a.attrelid = bc.oid
|
|
and i.indproc = '0'::oid -- no functional indices
|
|
ORDER BY class_name, index_name, attname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query prints a report of the user-defined
|
|
attributes and their types for all user-defined classes
|
|
in the database.
|
|
<pre> SELECT c.relname, a.attname, t.typname
|
|
FROM pg_class c, pg_attribute a, pg_type t
|
|
WHERE c.relkind = 'r' -- no indices
|
|
and c.relname !~ '^pg_' -- no catalogs
|
|
and c.relname !~ '^Inv' -- no large objects
|
|
and a.attnum > 0 -- no system att's
|
|
and a.attrelid = c.oid
|
|
and a.atttypid = t.oid
|
|
ORDER BY relname, attname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all user-defined base types (not
|
|
including array types).
|
|
<pre> SELECT u.usename, t.typname
|
|
FROM pg_type t, pg_user u
|
|
WHERE u.usesysid = int2in(int4out(t.typowner))
|
|
and t.typrelid = '0'::oid -- no complex types
|
|
and t.typelem = '0'::oid -- no arrays
|
|
and u.usename <> 'postgres'
|
|
ORDER BY usename, typname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all left-unary (post-fix) operators.
|
|
<pre> SELECT o.oprname AS left_unary,
|
|
right.typname AS operand,
|
|
result.typname AS return_type
|
|
FROM pg_operator o, pg_type right, pg_type result
|
|
WHERE o.oprkind = 'l' -- left unary
|
|
and o.oprright = right.oid
|
|
and o.oprresult = result.oid
|
|
ORDER BY operand;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all right-unary (pre-fix) operators.
|
|
<pre> SELECT o.oprname AS right_unary,
|
|
left.typname AS operand,
|
|
result.typname AS return_type
|
|
FROM pg_operator o, pg_type left, pg_type result
|
|
WHERE o.oprkind = 'r' -- right unary
|
|
and o.oprleft = left.oid
|
|
and o.oprresult = result.oid
|
|
ORDER BY operand;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all binary operators.
|
|
<pre> SELECT o.oprname AS binary_op,
|
|
left.typname AS left_opr,
|
|
right.typname AS right_opr,
|
|
result.typname AS return_type
|
|
FROM pg_operator o, pg_type left, pg_type right, pg_type result
|
|
WHERE o.oprkind = 'b' -- binary
|
|
and o.oprleft = left.oid
|
|
and o.oprright = right.oid
|
|
and o.oprresult = result.oid
|
|
ORDER BY left_opr, right_opr;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query returns the name, number of arguments
|
|
(parameters) and return type of all user-defined C
|
|
functions. The same query can be used to find all
|
|
built-in C functions if you change the "<B>C</B>" to "<B>internal</B>",
|
|
or all <B>SQL</B> functions if you change the "<B>C</B>" to
|
|
"<B>sql</B>".
|
|
<pre> SELECT p.proname, p.pronargs, t.typname
|
|
FROM pg_proc p, pg_language l, pg_type t
|
|
WHERE p.prolang = l.oid
|
|
and p.prorettype = t.oid
|
|
and l.lanname = 'c'
|
|
ORDER BY proname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all of the aggregate functions that
|
|
have been installed and the types to which they can be
|
|
applied. count is not included because it can take any
|
|
type as its argument.
|
|
<pre> SELECT a.aggname, t.typname
|
|
FROM pg_aggregate a, pg_type t
|
|
WHERE a.aggbasetype = t.oid
|
|
ORDER BY aggname, typname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
This query lists all of the operator classes that can
|
|
be used with each access method as well as the operators
|
|
that can be used with the respective operator
|
|
classes.
|
|
<pre> SELECT am.amname, opc.opcname, opr.oprname
|
|
FROM pg_am am, pg_amop amop, pg_opclass opc, pg_operator opr
|
|
WHERE amop.amopid = am.oid
|
|
and amop.amopclaid = opc.oid
|
|
and amop.amopopr = opr.oid
|
|
ORDER BY amname, opcname, oprname;
|
|
</pre>
|
|
<p>
|
|
|
|
<HR>
|
|
<A NAME="9"><B>9.</B></A>
|
|
This may mean different things depending on the archive
|
|
mode with which each class has been created. However, the
|
|
current implementation of the vacuum command does not perform any compaction or clustering of data. Therefore, the
|
|
UNIX files which store each POSTGRES class never shrink and
|
|
the space "reclaimed" by vacuum is never actually reused.
|
|
|
|
<HR width=50 align=left>
|
|
<A NAME="10"><B>10.</B></A>
|
|
Data for certain classes may stored elsewhere if a
|
|
non-standard storage manager was specified when they were
|
|
created. Use of non-standard storage managers is an experimental feature that is not supported outside of Berkeley.
|
|
<HR>
|
|
<font size=-1>
|
|
<A HREF="pg95user.html">[ TOC ]</A>
|
|
<A HREF="rules.html">[ Previous ]</A>
|
|
<A HREF="refs.html">[ Next ]</A>
|
|
</font>
|
|
|
|
|