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Date:      Wed, 2 Oct 2002 03:06:37 -0700
From:      Mailing Lists <lists@imagefoundation.com>
To:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   MySQL or Postgresql on FreeBSD, have I just started a holy war?
Message-ID:  <A33169A8-D5EE-11D6-B872-0003935761AA@imagefoundation.com>
In-Reply-To: <20021002101939.A497@a2448.av.si-aceralia>

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Hi all,

I've just been getting ready to start serious MySQL development on a 
Dual Processor FreeBSD box and I stumbled across the following blog 
entry on the web today which has me thinking:

http://jeremy.zawodny.com/blog/archives/000203.html#000203

The coles notes version is that the author, who seems to have some 
chops in both MySQL and FreeBSD (looks like he's a sysadmin at Yahoo, 
hi if you're out there Jeremy), has come across some issues with 
threading and smp support while using MySQL & FreeBSD. Now, of course, 
he doesn't mention is the machines where these issues come up are super 
high traffic or not, so this may be all moot if you're not running say, 
Yahoo!

I'm still a babe in the woods when it comes to MySQL, but I'm 
redeveloping several databases that I did some time ago in a 
proprietary database solution (4D) and I'll be damned if I'm going to 
redo these things again any time soon, so I'd like to know that I've 
made the right choice of DB & Platform. I've been really happy with 4D 
overall, but need to have more connectivity options, hence the move.

There must be a ton of people running MySQL on FreeBSD, so my first 
question is, are the issues raised here ones likely to occur on a low 
to medium volume system? I'm doing about 100,000 queries a day on our 
current db server from a variety of websites and would expect this 
volume to double or triple in the next year.

My FreeBSD Box is currently DP PIII 500's, but I'll be upgrading it to 
Ghz PIII's before deployment with a gig of RAM, more if needed. My 
current DB server is actually an iMac, it's a long story, with a 400Mhz 
G3 and 512 mb RAM running OS X 10.2 and keeping up quite nicely, so I 
don't imagine the hardware itself will be a limiting factor.

My second question is, if it looks like this will potentially be an 
issue, how does Postgresql perform on FreeBSD. I could use it just as 
easily as MySQL and, from what I've heard, it's a little beefier in 
some aspects. With regards to threading issues, am I likely to be 
happier with Postgresql in the long term?

Our current DB server runs for _MONTHS_ at a time without me even 
having to look at it, so reliability is the key factor in my decision 
process. Moving away from FreeBSD is not an option I'd like to consider 
at the moment, as I'm quite happy with it so far, so I'd like to pick 
the db that likes FreeBSD the best.

Sorry if I just started a holy war, I promise not to ask about Postfix 
v Qmail! :-)

Tom Wiebe


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