On Wed, Sep 17, 2014 at 9:07 AM, Matthew Kelly <mke...@tripadvisor.com> wrote: > Here is where I think the timezone and PostGIS cases are fundamentally > different: > I can pretty easily make sure that all my servers run in the same timezone. > That's just good practice. I'm also going to install the same version of > PostGIS everywhere in a cluster. I'll build PostGIS and its dependencies > from the exact same source files, regardless of when I build the machine. > > Timezone is a user level setting; PostGIS is a user level library used by a > subset. > > glibc is a system level library, and text is a core data type, however. > Changing versions to something that doesn't match the kernel can lead to > system level instability, broken linkers, etc. (I know because I tried). > Here are some subtle other problems that fall out: > > * Upgrading glibc, the kernel, and linker through the package manager in > order to get security updates can cause the corruption. > * A basebackup that is taken in production and placed on a backup server > might not be valid on that server, or your desktop machine, or on the spare > you keep to do PITR when someone screws up. > * Unless you keep _all_ of your clusters on the same OS, machines from your > database spare pool probably won't be the right OS when you add them to the > cluster because a member failed. > > Keep in mind here, by OS I mean CentOS versions. (we're running a mix of > late 5.x and 6.x, because of our numerous issues with the 6.x kernel) > > The problem with LC_IDENTIFICATION is that every machine I have seen reports > revision "1.0", date "2000-06-24". It doesn't seem like the versioning is > being actively maintained. > > I'm with Martjin here, lets go ICU, if only because it moves sorting to a > user level library, instead of a system level. Martjin do you have a link to > the out of tree patch? If not I'll find it. I'd like to apply it to a > branch and start playing with it.
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What I find astonishing is that whoever maintains glibc (or the Red Hat packaging for it) thinks it's OK to change the collation order in a minor release. I'd understand changing it between, say, RHEL 6 and RHEL 7. But the idea that minor release, supposedly safe updates think they can whack this around without breaking applications really kind of blows my mind. -- Robert Haas EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company -- Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers
