[Pkg-postgresql-public] pgpool packaging

Peter Eisentraut peter_e@gmx.net
Sun, 18 Jul 2004 23:04:20 +0200


I'm packaging pgpool, a connection pool proxy for PostgreSQL.  It's a 
little server that takes client connections and passes them on to the 
real PostgreSQL server, while doing the connection caching thing.  I 
would like to tell you about a few packaging issues that might interact 
with the postgresql package.

To the client, the proxy should appear as transparent as possible. That 
implies that the socket file has to be placed in /var/run/postgresql.  
Absent better ideas, I will use port 5433 by default, so the user has 
to reroute his applications explicitly, or do the switch with 
PostgreSQL manually if he wants truly transparent access.

I would like to have the server running as a nonprivileged user.  To get 
write access to /var/run/postgresql, that user has to be postgres, 
unless you propose to play various games with group permissions.

Additionally, the postgresql package should behave reasonably if the 
directory /var/run/postgresql is already there when it is installed 
(because pgpool might have been installed first) and should not remove 
it if there are still files in there.

Does that sound reasonable?