Rich Shepard <rshepard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > Seems to me that the preferred filesystem for postgres has varied over the > years from /var/lib/ to /usr/local/ and back again. No, it hasn't. The PG code itself doesn't make any assumptions about the location of $PGDATA AFAIR, but there are a large number of packagings that assume specific places like /var/lib/pgsql/. If you've changed platforms or changed between installing from source and installing a prebuilt package, you might notice some variability. In any case you're certainly welcome to put $PGDATA anywhere you want. [ Thinks for a bit ... ] Note that "packaging" might extend further than meets the eye. For instance, if you want to move $PGDATA on a recent Red Hat system, you need to tweak not only the initscript but the SELinux policy, which by default will constrain the postmaster to write only under /var/lib/pgsql/. regards, tom lane
