I'm currently looking into using Perl for DBMS related projects and would greatly appreciate input from other monks on the sysadmin aspects of installing and maintaining the various DBMS.

After a few days of SuperSearching, I gathered that PostgreSQL is the most fully functional/complete of the various options (while not necessarily the fastest or best suited for all tasks). I went ahead and downloaded/installed PostgreSQL (since the docs said it was required) and the DBD::Pg driver module.

After it was installed, I tried to start the server and found that there were several directory permissions snags that I had to sort through just to get past the "permission denied" messages.

Once I got past the permissions problems, I got the message about needing to increase SHMMAX value. After researching this via SunSolve (this is on a Solaris system) I found the correct syntax for changing the /etc/system file and did an "init 6" to restart the system (5:30 PM Thanksgiving day and I was the only user logged on). Well, 30 minutes later the system wasn't up yet so I had to make a trip to the machine room. Seems the root partition needed an fsck. Which would've happened regardless of the /etc/system changes but a hassle nonetheless. Three hours later it was back up and running again.

So the question is do the other DBMS require this much hassle (requiring server installations, system memory tweaks, etc.) or was this experience typical? Seeing as I've already spent three days researching PostgreSQL (which seems to be working for the moment) I would appreciate some feedback from other sysadmins that have been through several different DBMS installs and can enlighten me as to what types of regular maintenance I should expect (the costs usually hidden from the end user/programmer).

TIA for your time.

--Jim

In reply to Sysadmin Aspects of DBMS by jlongino

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