> 1. I have heard of problems arising from compiling PostGreSQL (8.3) on > 64-bit > processors. What sort of problems am I likely to encounter and how > should I fix > them? We are will run Linux Redhat 5 on a Dell PE2950 III Quad Core > Xeon E54 > 2.33 GHz, and a Dell PE2950 III Quad Core Xeon L5335 2.0 GHz. > > 2. Are there performance problems running PostGreSQL 8.3 on a 64-bit > processor? > I have a few more questions on the 64-bit topic. Is there any benefit to running a 32-bit OS (rhel 5 in this case) on a server with more than 4 GB of memory? In other words, can the OS-level cache take advantage of more than 4 GB of memory? Can a process (such as PG backend) use more than 4 GB of shared memory on a 32-bit OS? Or is the 4 GB memory point the place where you normally transition to a 64-bit OS? For people with experience running postgresql on systems with 16+ GB of memory, what parameter settings have you found to be effective? (This would be a large database that's mostly read-only that we'd like to fit completely in memory) Is it possible to backup (pg_dump) from a 32-bit OS to a 64-bit OS, or is a plain SQL dump necessary?
