Re: Postgresql broken

On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Cristian Gafton wrote:

On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, Dwight Johnson wrote:

I agree. Can someone track down the RH5.0 rpm packager so we can start a dialog?

Hello,

I am the packager for the RH 5.0 postgres RPM. What's wrong with it ?

Hi Christian...

I don't currently deal with Linux, so don't know what problems
exist with the RPM, but would be possible for you to take the current
snapshot, and build an RPM for that? Then upload it to our bindist
directory so that ppl can take alook at it before the release, to check
for any problems?

On Thu, 26 Feb 1998, The Hermit Hacker wrote:

I don't currently deal with Linux, so don't know what problems
exist with the RPM, but would be possible for you to take the current
snapshot, and build an RPM for that? Then upload it to our bindist

Sure. I am downloading the snapshot now, and I will build RPMs and upload
them to ftp://ftp.redhat.com/home/gafton/pgsql, if you want to point out
ppl to a kind-of-official RH rpm.

Best wishes,

Cristian
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cristian Gafton -- gafton@redhat.com -- Red Hat Software, Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are.

I am the packager for the RH 5.0 postgres RPM. What's wrong with it ?

Hi Cristian. I'm developing Postgres on RH4.2 at home, and have RH5.0 running at
work. There are three known problems with the Postgres packages (some of which are
likely not directly related to the packaging itself):

1) You have compiled the package with USE_LOCALE enabled. However, neither of my
machines behaves properly with that (including a clean build from source on RH4.2).
The test is to start up psql and try

select '$1.00'::money;

which fails. I believe this works on other platforms, and I distinctly recall getting
this to work on my development machine (in fact I helped implement it), but afaik
that was pre-RH4.2. My small test program which exercises the locale support in libc
also no longer works under RH4.2, though by now that may be from my mucking with it
trying to get it to work.

2) pre-glibc2.0.7 has rounding bugs which cause odd results in some date/time
routines. The test is to try

select '4 hours'::timespan;

which will return '3 hours 59 mins 60 secs' on a machine with problems. We have
reports from someone running Debian that glibc2.0.7-pre1 (?) fixes the problem. Any
idea on when glibc2.0.7 might be available?

3) the ownership of the data area is incorrect as shipped (I assume this is
rpm-specific). On my RH5.0 machine, which is a VAResearch system with Linux/Postgres
preinstalled, the data area was owned by root, and the backend cannot start up. If
the ownership is changed to the postgres account then the backend starts.

PostgreSQL-6.3 will be released in a few days, and it would be nice to resolve
these issues.

Thanks for building a new RPM. I'll try it at work on my production machine tomorrow.
Also, we will have new documentation in v6.3, including html and hardcopy, and you
will want to repackage that too. Look in the doc directory (in a day or two; I'm
still building the docs and haven't committed anything yet to the source tree).

Best regards.

- Tom

On Fri, 27 Feb 1998, Thomas G. Lockhart wrote:

The test is to start up psql and try

select '$1.00'::money;

which fails. I believe this works on other platforms, and I distinctly recall getting

That is true, it fails. However, if you could point to me where exactly
something is going wrong I could try and have a look at it. I don't really
feel like digging into postgresql source to see which functions are at
fault. A small C test program will be nice.

2) pre-glibc2.0.7 has rounding bugs which cause odd results in some date/time
routines. The test is to try

select '4 hours'::timespan;

Yepp, it fails.

which will return '3 hours 59 mins 60 secs' on a machine with problems. We have
reports from someone running Debian that glibc2.0.7-pre1 (?) fixes the problem. Any
idea on when glibc2.0.7 might be available?

the 2.0.7pre1 is available. However, if the debian folks fixed this
problem, I can tell you that their patch didn't made it so far in the
glibc source tree. Again, a small C test program that shows what exactly
fails will be nice.

3) the ownership of the data area is incorrect as shipped (I assume this is
rpm-specific). On my RH5.0 machine, which is a VAResearch system with Linux/Postgres
preinstalled, the data area was owned by root, and the backend cannot start up. If
the ownership is changed to the postgres account then the backend starts.

I think that is a VAResearch thing. The package definitely installs the
/var/lib/pgsql directory owned by postgres account.

Thanks for building a new RPM. I'll try it at work on my production machine tomorrow.
Also, we will have new documentation in v6.3, including html and hardcopy, and you
will want to repackage that too. Look in the doc directory (in a day or two; I'm
still building the docs and haven't committed anything yet to the source tree).

I am still waiting to find out a way to get cvs read-only access to the
postgres sources. Downloading a full snapshot evey other day is not my
favorite game. Especially when a nice shell script can take care of
automatically generating new rpms every day... :-)

Best wishes,

Cristian
--
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Cristian Gafton -- gafton@redhat.com -- Red Hat Software, Inc.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
UNIX is user friendly. It's just selective about who its friends are.

The test is to start up psql and try

select '$1.00'::money;

which fails. I believe this works on other platforms, and I distinctly recall getting

That is true, it fails. However, if you could point to me where exactly
something is going wrong I could try and have a look at it. I don't really
feel like digging into postgresql source to see which functions are at
fault. A small C test program will be nice.

Did you receive my mail dated 1998-02-28 03:02UTC? It contained a very small test program
which (I believe) illustrates the problem. I've now modified it by dropping the relevant
Postgres "money" support code straight into it; the new version is enclosed below. Just do

golem> make testlocale
cc testlocale.c -o testlocale

To try it out. It _may_ just be illustrating my lack of understanding of the locale
support code in Unix, but I'm pretty sure this works on other platforms (and used to work
on an older - 3.03? 4.0? 4.1? - RH installation).

2) pre-glibc2.0.7 has rounding bugs which cause odd results in some date/time
routines. The test is to try

select '4 hours'::timespan;

Yepp, it fails.

Dwight reported success when upgrading to a newer glibc but I didn't see a change when
trying the glibc in your home directory area. Oliver (I think??) reported success with
Debian with a newer glibc, so perhaps things are fixed and I just didn't do the right
things to have the machine use the new library.

which will return '3 hours 59 mins 60 secs' on a machine with problems. We have
reports from someone running Debian that glibc2.0.7-pre1 (?) fixes the problem. Any
idea on when glibc2.0.7 might be available?

the 2.0.7pre1 is available. However, if the debian folks fixed this
problem, I can tell you that their patch didn't made it so far in the
glibc source tree. Again, a small C test program that shows what exactly
fails will be nice.

OK. I'll work on it and try getting it to you soon. As I recall, it is problems with
rounding behavior in one of the math functions (maybe modf()??). Anyway, will let you
know.

3) the ownership of the data area is incorrect as shipped (I assume this is
rpm-specific). On my RH5.0 machine, which is a VAResearch system with Linux/Postgres
preinstalled, the data area was owned by root, and the backend cannot start up. If
the ownership is changed to the postgres account then the backend starts.

I think that is a VAResearch thing. The package definitely installs the
/var/lib/pgsql directory owned by postgres account.

OK.

Thanks for building a new RPM. I'll try it at work on my production machine tomorrow.
Also, we will have new documentation in v6.3, including html and hardcopy, and you
will want to repackage that too. Look in the doc directory (in a day or two; I'm
still building the docs and haven't committed anything yet to the source tree).

I am still waiting to find out a way to get cvs read-only access to the
postgres sources. Downloading a full snapshot evey other day is not my
favorite game. Especially when a nice shell script can take care of
automatically generating new rpms every day... :-)

We are using CVSup. I built a static version on RH4.2 and placed it on

ftp://postgresql.org/pub/CVSup/cvsup-15.2-client-linux-static.tar.gz

There is a non-static image also, but it probably requires some Modula-3 libraries. Hey,
that brings up something: would you be interested in a Modula-3 rpm? It would make
installing CVSup much easier, since I wouldn't have to do the static library thing.

Actually, I'd be willing to build the rpm (or at least the source rpm) or even better help
set up someone at RH, but I don't know much about rpm building and have been working so
much on Postgres that I really don't want to start from scratch on figuring it out.

I found that it built fairly easily, but it takes 200MB (!!) to do the build. The
installation footprint is much smaller. It's a nice environment, and apparently let John
Polstra, the CVSup developer, do his project fairly easily.

Talk to you soon...

- Tom

To try it out. It _may_ just be illustrating my lack of understanding of the locale
support code in Unix...

bingo. Read on :(

And how is a good outut look like ? Because all I am getting is:

shefu (gafton):~/src/locale>./locale
numeric decimal point '.'
cashin- frac digits '127'; mon decimal ''; mon thousands ''; currency ''; positive ''; negative ''
shefu (gafton):~/src/locale>./locale 1
locale set to C
numeric decimal point '.'
cashin- frac digits '127'; mon decimal ''; mon thousands ''; currency ''; positive ''; negative ''

That is what I get too. So, since I'm going to have to spell it out for you, I figured I'd carry the
little test code over to a Solaris machine. Well, same result there too. *damn* Tried the man page on
the Solaris box, and it tells me that the defaults for the "C" locale should be empty strings, just
like we are getting. The Linux man pages don't mention the expected values afaik.

*slaps forehead* Sheesh. Sorry for the false alarm. We'll fix this for v6.3...

[Marc, we should have this working for the release. Will update docs in the next few minutes then
work on a patch from a clean source tree]

There is a non-static image also, but it probably requires some Modula-3 libraries. Hey,
that brings up something: would you be interested in a Modula-3 rpm? It would make
installing CVSup much easier, since I wouldn't have to do the static library thing.

<snip to make this now out of context :)> Okay, give me the information...

I'm focused on getting Postgres out the door, but will follow up on this with you in a few days, OK?

I'd like to do an install of your Postgres-6.3 package on my RH5.0 machine before you finalize your
package. If there are any last-minute problems we can fix them in the source tree and give you a
fresh tree for release.

Thanks again for all your help.

- Tom