Postgres - Tuning necessary?

[CGraham]

I'm using the Nagios VM appliance and i'm getting alerts about the total processes on the Nagios box.

A quick run of ps aux and uniq -c says that postgres is running the most processes (31). Can someone explain what postgres is for? Is there some recommended tuning in "/var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf" that will help with performance or effect the total number of processes?

[lmiltchev]

The postgres database is used for XI interface specific data (dashlets, users, etc.). If there is a problem with it, you wouldn't be able to access the interface. Having so many postgres processes running is not unusual. You can try "tuning" it but I would suggest doing it in the test environment first. Make a backup of the "/var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf", so you can revert back to it if necessary.
Hope this helps.