Provided by:
pgbouncer_1.3.1-3_i386 
NAME
pgbouncer - Lightweight connection pooler for PostgreSQL.
SYNOPSIS
[databases]
db = ...
[pgbouncer]
...
DESCRIPTION
Config file is in "ini" format. Section names are between " and ".
Lines starting with ";" or "" are taken as comment and ignored. The
characters ";" and "" are not recognized when they appear later in the
line.
SECTION [PGBOUNCER]
Generic settings
logfile
Specifies log file. Log file is kept open so after rotation kill
-HUP or on console RELOAD; should be done. Note: The windows
environment by a stop and start with a service property.
Default: not set.
pidfile
Specifies pid file. Without pidfile, the daemonization is not
allowed.
Default: not set.
listen_addr
Specifies IPv4 address, where to listen for TCP connections. Or *
meaning "listen on all addresses". When not set, only unix socket
connections are allowed.
Default: not set
listen_port
On which port to listen on. Applies to both TCP and Unix sockets.
Default: 6432
unix_socket_dir
Specifies location for Unix sockets. Applies to both listening
socket and server connections. If set to empty string, Unix sockets
are disabled. Note: Did not support in the windows environment.
Default: /tmp
user
If set, specifies UNIX user to change to. Work only if started as
root or user is same as current user. Note: Did not support in the
windows environment.
Default: not set
auth_file
Load user names and passwords from this file. File format used is
same as for PostgreSQL pg_auth/pg_pwd file, so can be pointed
directly to backend file.
Default: not set.
auth_type
How to authenticate users.
md5
Use MD5-based password check. auth_file may contain both
md5-encrypted or plain-text passwords. Default.
crypt
Use crypt(3) based bassword check. auth_file must contain
plain-text passwords.
plain
Clear-text password is sent over wire.
trust
No authentication is done. Username must still exists in
auth_file.
any
Like trust but username given is ignored. Requires that all
databases have configured to log in as specific user.
Additionally, the console database allows any user to log in as
admin.
pool_mode
Specifies when server connection is tagged as reusable for other
clients.
session
Server is released back to pool after client disconnects.
Default.
transaction
Server is released back to pool after transaction finishes.
statement
Server is released back to pool after query finishes. Long
transactions spanning multiple statements are disallowed in
this mode.
max_client_conn
Maximum number of client connections allowed. When increased then
the file descriptor limits should also be increased. Note that
actual number of file descriptiors used is more that
max_client_conn. Theoretical maximum used is:
max_client_conn + (max_pool_size * total_databases * total_users)
if each user connects under it’s own username to server. If
database user is specified in connect string (all users connect
under same username), the theoretical maximum is:
max_client_conn + (max_pool_size * total_databases)
The theoretical maximum should be never reached, unless somebody
deliberately crafts special load for it. Still, it means you should
give fds liberately.
Search for ulimit in your favourite shell man page. Note: ulimit
can’t be held in the windows environment for now.
Default: 100
default_pool_size
How many server connection to allow per user/database pair. Can be
overrided in per-database config.
Default: 20
reserve_pool_size
How many additional connections to allow to a pool.
How many server connection to allow per user/database pair. Can be
overrided in per-database config. 0 disables.
Default: 0 (disabled)
reserve_pool_timeout
If a client has not been services in this many seconds, pgbouncer
enables use of additional connections from reserve pool. 0
disables.
Default: 5
server_round_robin
By default, pgbouncer reuses server connections in LIFO manner, so
that few connections get the most load. This gives best performance
if you have single server serving a database. But if there is TCP
round-robin behind a database IP then it’s better if pgbouncer also
uses connections in that manner, thus achieving uniform load.
Default: 0
ignore_startup_parameters
By default, PgBouncer allows only parameters it can keep track of
in startup packets - client_encoding, datestyle, timezone and
standard_conforming_strings.
All others raise error. To allow others too, they can be specified
here, so that pgbouncer knows that they are handled by admin and it
can ignore them.
Default: empty
Log settings
syslog
Toggles syslog on/off As for windows environment, eventlog is used
for substitution.
Default: 0
syslog_facility
Under what facility to send log to syslog. Possibilities: auth,
authpriv, daemon, user, local0-7
Default: daemon
log_connections
Log successful logins.
Default: 1
log_disconnections
Log disconnections with reasons.
Default: 1
log_pooler_errors
Log error messaged pooler sends to clients.
Default: 1
Console access control
admin_users
Comma-separted list of database users that are allowed to connect
and run all commands on console. Ignored when auth_mode=any, then
any username is allowed in as admin.
Default: empty
stats_users
Comma-separated list of database users that are allowed to connect
and run read-only queries on console. Thats means all SHOW commands
except SHOW FDS.
Default: empty.
Connection sanity checks, timeouts
server_reset_query
Query send to server on connection release, before making it
available to other clients. At that moment no transaction is in
progress so it should not include ABORT or ROLLBACK.
Good choice for 8.2 and below is:
server_reset_query = RESET ALL; SET SESSION AUTHORIZATION DEFAULT;
for 8.3 and above its enough to do:
server_reset_query = DISCARD ALL;
server_check_delay
How long to keep released immidiately available, without running
sanity-check query on it. If 0 then the query is ran always.
Default: 30
server_check_query
Simple do-nothing query to check if server connection is alive.
If empty string, then sanity checking is disabled.
Default: SELECT 1;
server_lifetime
Pooler tries to close server connections that are been connected
longer than this. Setting it to 0 means the connection is to be
used only once, then closed.
Default: 3600
server_idle_timeout
If server connection has been idle more than this then there’s too
many connections in the pool and this one can be dropped.
Default: 600
server_connect_timeout
If connection and login wont finish in this time, the connection
will be closed.
Default: 15
server_login_retry
If login failed, because of failure from connect() or
authentication that pooler waits this much before retrying to
connect.
Default: 15
client_login_timeout
If client connect but does not manage to login in this time, it
will be disconnected. Mainly needed to avoid dead connections
stalling SUSPEND and thus online restart.
Default: 60
autodb_idle_timeout
If the automatically created (vie "*") database pools have been
unused this many seconds, they are freed. The negative aspect of
that is that their statistics is also forgotten.
Default: 3600
Dangerous timeouts
Setting following timeouts cause unexpected errors.
query_timeout
Queries running longer than that are canceled. This should be used
only with slightly smaller server-side statement_timeout, to apply
only for network problems. [seconds]
Default: 0 (disabled)
client_idle_timeout
Client connections idling longer than that are closed. This should
be larger then client-side connection lifetime settings, to apply
only for network problems. [seconds]
Default: 0 (disabled)
Low-level network settings
pkt_buf
Internal buffer size for packets. Affects size of TCP packets sent
and general memory usage. Actual libpq packets can be larger than
this so no need to set it large.
Default: 2048
sbuf_loopcnt
How many times to process data on one connection, before
proceeding. Without limit, one connection with big resultset can
stall pgbouncer for a long time. One loop processes one pkt_buf
amount of data. 0 means no limit.
Default: 5
tcp_defer_accept
Details about following options should be looked from man 7 tcp.
Default: 45 on Linux, otherwise 0
tcp_socket_buffer
Default: not set
tcp_keepalive
Default: not set
tcp_keepcnt
Default: not set
tcp_keepidle
Default: not set
tcp_keepintvl
Default: not set
SECTION [DATABASES]
This contains key=value pairs where key will be taken as database name
and value as libpq-connstring style list of key=value pairs. As actual
libpq is not used, so not all features from libpq can be used
(service=, quoting).
Database name can contain characters [0-9A-Za-z_.-] without quoting.
Names that contain other chars need to be quoted with standard SQL
ident quoting: double quotes where "" is taken as single quote.
"\*" acts as fallback database: if the exact name does not exist, it’s
value is taken as connect string for requested database. Such
automatically created database entries are cleaned up if they stay idle
longer then the time specified in autodb_idle_timeout parameter.
Location parameters
dbname
Destination database name.
Default: same as client-side database name.
host
IP-address to connect to.
Default: not set, meaning to use unix-socket.
port
Default: 5432
user, password
If user= is set, all connections to destination database will be
done with that user, meaning that there will be only one pool for
this database.
Otherwise pgbouncer tries to log into destination database with
client username, meaning that there will be one pool per user.
Pool configuration
pool_size
Set maximum size of pools for this database. If not set, the
default_pool_size is used.
connect_query
Query to be executed after connecttion is established, but before
taking the connection into use by clients. If the query raises
errors, they are logged but ignored otherwise.
Extra parameters
They allow setting default parameters on server connection.
Note that since version 1.1 PgBouncer tracks client changes for their
values, so their use in pgbouncer.ini is deprecated now.
client_encoding
Ask specific client_encoding from server.
datestyle
Ask specific datestyle from server.
timezone
Ask specific timezone from server.
AUTHENTICATION FILE FORMAT
PgBouncer needs its own user database. The users are loaded from text
file that should be in same format as PostgreSQL’s pg_auth/pg_pwd file.
"username1" "password" ...
"username2" "md5abcdef012342345" ...
There shoud be at least 2 fields, surrounded by double quotes. First is
username and second either plain-text or md5-hashed password. PgBouncer
ignores rest of the line.
Such file format allows to direct PgBouncer directly to PostgreSQL user
file under data directory.
EXAMPLE
Minimal config
[databases]
template1 = host=127.0.0.1 dbname=template1
[pgbouncer]
pool_mode = session
listen_port = 6543
listen_addr = 127.0.0.1
auth_type = md5
auth_file = users.txt
logfile = pgbouncer.log
pidfile = pgbouncer.pid
admin_users = someuser
stats_users = stat_collector
Database defaults
[databases]
; foodb over unix socket
foodb =
; redirect bardb to bazdb on localhost
bardb = host=127.0.0.1 dbname=bazdb
; acceess to dest database will go with single user
forcedb = host=127.0.0.1 port=300 user=baz password=foo client_encoding=UNICODE datestyle=ISO
SEE ALSO
pgbouncer(1) - manpage for general usage, console commands.
https://developer.skype.com/SkypeGarage/DbProjects/PgBouncer
02/05/2010 PGBOUNCER(5)