PostgreSQL, Second Edition

Configuring Your PostgreSQL Runtime Environment

After you have finished installing the PostgreSQL distribution, you may want to review the runtime configuration options.

Permanent configuration options should be defined in the file $PGDATA/postgresql.conf. The postgresql.conf file is a plain text file that you can maintain with your favorite editor (vi, emacs, and so on). When you create a new database cluster, the initdb program will create a default postgresql.conf file for you. postgresql.conf is arranged as a series of option= value pairs; blank lines are ignored and any text that follows an octothorpe (#) is treated as a comment. Here is a snippet from a postgresql.conf file created by initdb:

 # # Connection Parameters # #tcpip_socket = ...