PostgreSQL Installation Instructions Short Version ./configure gmake gmake install adduser postgres su - postgres /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data >logfile 2>&1 & /usr/local/pgsql/bin/createdb test /usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql test The long version is the rest of this document. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Requirements In general, a modern Unix-compatible platform should be able to run PostgreSQL. The platforms that had received explicit testing at the time of release are listed in the section called Supported Platforms below. In the doc subdirectory of the distribution there are several platform-specific FAQ documents you might wish to consult if you are having trouble. The following prerequisites exist for building PostgreSQL: * GNU make is required; other make programs will not work. GNU make is often installed under the name gmake; this document will always refer to it by that name. (On GNU/Linux systems GNU make is the default tool with the name make.) To test for GNU make enter gmake --version If at all possible you should use version 3.76.1 or later. * You need an ISO/ANSI C compiler. Recent versions of GCC are recommendable, but PostgreSQL is known to build with a wide variety of compilers from different vendors. * gzip * The GNU Readline library for comfortable line editing and command history retrieval will automatically be used if found. You might wish to install it before proceeding, but it is not required. (On NetBSD, the libedit library is readline-compatible and is used if libreadline is not found.) * Flex and Bison are not required when building from a released source package because the output files are pre-generated. You will need these programs only when building from a CVS tree or when the actual scanner and parser definition files were changed. If you need them, be sure to get Flex 2.5.4 or later and Bison 1.28 or later. Other yacc programs can sometimes be used, but doing so requires extra efforts and is not recommended. Other lex programs will definitely not work. * To build on Windows NT or Windows 2000 you need the Cygwin and cygipc packages. See the file doc/FAQ_MSWIN for details. If you need to get a GNU package, you can find it at your local GNU mirror site (see http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html for a list) or at ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/. Also check that you have sufficient disk space. You will need about 30 MB for the source tree during compilation and about 5 MB for the installation directory. An empty database takes about 1 MB, later it takes about five times the amount of space that a flat text file with the same data would take. If you are going to run the regression tests you will temporarily need an extra 20 MB. Use the df command to check for disk space. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If You Are Upgrading The internal data storage format changes with new releases of PostgreSQL. Therefore, if you are upgrading an existing installation that does not have a version number "7.2.x", you must back up and restore your data as shown here. These instructions assume that your existing installation is under the /usr/local/pgsql directory, and that the data area is in /usr/local/pgsql/data. Substitute your paths appropriately. 1. Make sure that your database is not updated during or after the backup. This does not affect the integrity of the backup, but the changed data would of course not be included. If necessary, edit the permissions in the file /usr/local/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf (or equivalent) to disallow access from everyone except you. 2. To dump your database installation, type: pg_dumpall > outputfile If you need to preserve the OIDs (such as when using them as foreign keys), then use the -o option when running pg_dumpall. pg_dumpall does not save large objects. Check the Administrator's Guide if you need to do this. Make sure that you use the pg_dumpall command from the version you are currently running. 7.2's pg_dumpall should not be used on older databases. 3. If you are installing the new version at the same location as the old one then shut down the old server, at the latest before you install the new files: kill -INT `cat /usr/local/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid` Versions prior to 7.0 do not have this postmaster.pid file. If you are using such a version you must find out the process id of the server yourself, for example by typing ps ax | grep postmaster, and supply it to the kill command. On systems that have PostgreSQL started at boot time, there is probably a start-up file that will accomplish the same thing. For example, on a Red Hat Linux system one might find that /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql stop works. 4. If you are installing in the same place as the old version then it is also a good idea to move the old installation out of the way, in case you still need it later on. Use a command like this: mv /usr/local/pgsql /usr/local/pgsql.old After you have installed PostgreSQL 7.2, create a new database directory and start the new server. Remember that you must execute these commands while logged in to the special database user account (which you already have if you are upgrading). /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data Finally, restore your data with /usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql -d template1 -f outputfile using the new psql. You can also install the new version in parallel with the old one to decrease the downtime. These topics are discussed at length in the Administrator's Guide, which you are encouraged to read in any case. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Installation Procedure 1. Configuration The first step of the installation procedure is to configure the source tree for your system and choose the options you would like. This is done by running the configure script. For a default installation simply enter ./configure This script will run a number of tests to guess values for various system dependent variables and detect some quirks of your operating system, and finally creates several files in the build tree to record what it found. The default configuration will build the server and utilities, as well as all client applications and interfaces that only require a C compiler. All files will be installed under /usr/local/pgsql by default. You can customize the build and installation process by supplying one or more of the following command line options to configure: --prefix=PREFIX Install all files under the directory PREFIX instead of /usr/local/pgsql. The actual files will be installed into various subdirectories; no files will ever be installed directly into the PREFIX directory. If you have special needs, you can also customize the individual subdirectories with the following options. --exec-prefix=EXEC-PREFIX You can install architecture-dependent files under a different prefix, EXEC-PREFIX, than what PREFIX was set to. This can be useful to share architecture-independent files between hosts. If you omit this, then EXEC-PREFIX is set equal to PREFIX and both architecture dependent and independent files will be installed under the same tree, which is probably what you want. --bindir=DIRECTORY Specifies the directory for executable programs. The default is EXEC-PREFIX/bin, which normally means /usr/local/pgsql/bin. --datadir=DIRECTORY Sets the directory for read-only data files used by the installed programs. The default is PREFIX/share. Note that this has nothing to do with where your database files will be placed. --sysconfdir=DIRECTORY The directory for various configuration files, PREFIX/etc by default. --libdir=DIRECTORY The location to install libraries and dynamically loadable modules. The default is EXEC-PREFIX/lib. --includedir=DIRECTORY The directory for installing C and C++ header files. The default is PREFIX/include. --docdir=DIRECTORY Documentation files, except "man" pages, will be installed into this directory. The default is PREFIX/doc. --mandir=DIRECTORY The man pages that come with PostgreSQL will be installed under this directory, in their respective manx subdirectories. The default is PREFIX/man. Note: To reduce the pollution of shared installation locations (such as /usr/local/include), the string "/postgresql" is automatically appended to datadir, sysconfdir, includedir, and docdir, unless the fully expanded directory name already contains the string "postgres" or "pgsql". For example, if you choose /usr/local as prefix, the C header files will be installed in /usr/local/include/postgresql, but if the prefix is /opt/postgres, then they will be in /opt/postgres/include. --with-includes=DIRECTORIES DIRECTORIES is a colon-separated list of directories that will be added to the list the compiler searches for header files. If you have optional packages (such as GNU Readline) installed in a non-standard location you have to use this option and probably the corresponding --with-libraries option. Example: --with-includes=/opt/gnu/include:/usr/sup/include. --with-libraries=DIRECTORIES DIRECTORIES is a colon-separated list of directories to search for libraries. You will probably have to use this option (and the corresponding --with-includes option) if you have packages installed in non-standard locations. Example: --with-libraries=/opt/gnu/lib:/usr/sup/lib. --enable-locale Enables locale support. There is a performance penalty associated with locale support, but if you are not in an English-speaking environment you will most likely need this. --enable-recode Enables single-byte character set recode support. See the Administrator's Guide about this feature. --enable-multibyte Allows the use of multibyte character encodings. This is primarily for languages like Japanese, Korean, and Chinese. Read the Administrator's Guide for details. --with-pgport=NUMBER Set NUMBER as the default port number for server and clients. The default is 5432. The port can always be changed later on, but if you specify it here then both server and clients will have the same default compiled in, which can be very convenient. --with-CXX Build the C++ interface library. --with-perl Build the Perl interface module. The Perl interface will be installed at the usual place for Perl modules (typically under /usr/lib/perl), so you must have root access to perform the installation step (see step 4). You need to have Perl 5 installed to use this option. --with-python Build the Python interface module. You need to have root access to be able to install the Python module at its default place (/usr/lib/pythonx.y). To be able to use this option, you must have Python installed and your system needs to support shared libraries. If you instead want to build a new complete interpreter binary, you will have to do it manually. --with-tcl Builds components that require Tcl/Tk, which are libpgtcl, pgtclsh, pgtksh, pgaccess, and PL/Tcl. But see below about --without-tk. --without-tk If you specify --with-tcl and this option, then programs that require Tk (i.e., pgtksh and pgaccess) will be excluded. --with-tclconfig=DIRECTORY, --with-tkconfig=DIRECTORY Tcl/Tk installs the files tclConfig.sh and tkConfig.sh which contain certain configuration information that is needed to build modules interfacing to Tcl or Tk. These files are normally found automatically at their well-known location, but if you want to use a different version of Tcl or Tk you can specify the directory where to find them. --enable-odbc Build the ODBC driver package. --with-odbcinst=DIRECTORY Specifies the directory where the ODBC driver will expect its odbcinst.ini configuration file. The default is /usr/local/pgsql/etc or whatever you specified as --sysconfdir. A default file will be installed there. If you intend to share the odbcinst.ini file between several ODBC drivers then you may want to use this option. --with-krb4=DIRECTORY, --with-krb5=DIRECTORY Build with support for Kerberos authentication. You can use either Kerberos version 4 or 5, but not both. The DIRECTORY argument specifies the root directory of the Kerberos installation; /usr/athena is assumed as default. If the relevant headers files and libraries are not under a common parent directory, then you must use the --with-includes and --with-libraries options in addition to this option. If, on the other hand, the required files are in a location that is searched by default (e.g., /usr/lib), then you can leave off the argument. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your Kerberos installation is sufficient before proceeding. --with-krb-srvnam=NAME The name of the Kerberos service principal. "postgres" is the default. There's probably no reason to change this. --with-openssl=DIRECTORY Build with support for SSL (encrypted) connections. This requires the OpenSSL package to be installed. The DIRECTORY argument specifies the root directory of the OpenSSL installation; the default is /usr/local/ssl. configure will check for the required header files and libraries to make sure that your OpenSSL installation is sufficient before proceeding. --with-java Build the JDBC driver and associated Java packages. This option requires Ant to be installed (as well as a JDK, of course). Refer to the JDBC driver documentation in the Programmer's Guide for more information. --enable-syslog Enables the PostgreSQL server to use the syslog logging facility. (Using this option does not mean that you must log with syslog or even that it will be done by default, it simply makes it possible to turn this option on at run time.) --enable-debug Compiles all programs and libraries with debugging symbols. This means that you can run the programs through a debugger to analyze problems. This enlarges the size of the installed executables considerably, and on non-gcc compilers it usually also disables compiler optimization, causing slowdowns. However, having the symbols available is extremely helpful for dealing with any problems that may arise. Currently, this option is considered of marginal value for production installations, but you should have it on if you are doing development work or running a beta version. --enable-cassert Enables assertion checks in the server, which test for many "can't happen" conditions. This is invaluable for code development purposes, but the tests slow things down a little. Also, having the tests turned on won't necessarily enhance the stability of your server! The assertion checks are not categorized for severity, and so what might be a relatively harmless bug will still lead to postmaster restarts if it triggers an assertion failure. Currently, this option is not recommended for production use, but you should have it on for development work or when running a beta version. If you prefer a C or C++ compiler different from the one configure picks then you can set the environment variables CC and CXX, respectively, to the program of your choice. Similarly, you can override the default compiler flags with the CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS variables. For example: env CC=/opt/bin/gcc CFLAGS='-02 -pipe' ./configure 2. Build To start the build, type gmake (Remember to use GNU make.) The build can take anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour. The last line displayed should be All of PostgreSQL is successfully made. Ready to install. 3. Regression Tests If you want to test the newly built server before you install it, you can run the regression tests at this point. The regression tests are a test suite to verify that PostgreSQL runs on your machine in the way the developers expected it to. Type gmake check It is possible that some tests fail, due to differences in error message wording or floating point results. The file src/test/regress/README and the Administrator's Guide contain detailed information about interpreting the test results. You can repeat this test at any later time by issuing the same command. 4. Installing The Files Note: If you are upgrading an existing system and are going to install the new files over the old ones then you should have backed up your data and shut down the old server by now, as explained in the section called If You Are Upgrading above. To install PostgreSQL enter gmake install This will install files into the directories that were specified in step 1. Make sure that you have appropriate permissions to write into that area. Normally you need to do this step as root. Alternatively, you could create the target directories in advance and arrange for appropriate permissions to be granted. If you built the Perl or Python interfaces and you were not the root user when you executed the above command then that part of the installation probably failed. In that case you should become the root user and then do gmake -C src/interfaces/perl5 install gmake -C src/interfaces/python install Due to a quirk in the Perl build environment the first command will actually rebuild the complete interface and then install it. This is not harmful, just unusual. If you do not have superuser access you are on your own: you can still take the required files and place them in other directories where Perl or Python can find them, but how to do that is left as an exercise. The standard install installs only the header files needed for client application development. If you plan to do any server-side program development (such as custom functions or datatypes written in C), then you may want to install the entire PostgreSQL include tree into your target include directory. To do that, enter gmake install-all-headers This adds a megabyte or two to the install footprint, and is only useful if you don't plan to keep the whole source tree around for reference. (If you do, you can just use the source's include directory when building server-side software.) Client-only installation. If you want to install only the client applications and interface libraries, then you can use these commands: gmake -C src/bin install gmake -C src/interfaces install gmake -C doc install To undo the installation use the command gmake uninstall. However, this will not remove the Perl and Python interfaces and it will not remove any directories. After the installation you can make room by removing the built files from the source tree with the gmake clean command. This will preserve the choices made by the configure program, so that you can rebuild everything with gmake later on. To reset the source tree to the state in which it was distributed, use gmake distclean. If you are going to build for several platforms from the same source tree you must do this and re-configure for each build. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Post-Installation Setup Shared Libraries On some systems that have shared libraries (which most systems do) you need to tell your system how to find the newly installed shared libraries. The systems on which this is not necessary include FreeBSD, HP/UX, Irix, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, OSF/1 (Digital Unix, Tru64 UNIX), and Solaris. The method to set the shared library search path varies between platforms, but the most widely usable method is to set the environment variable LD_LIBRARY_PATH like so: In Bourne shells (sh, ksh, bash, zsh) LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/lib export LD_LIBRARY_PATH or in csh or tcsh setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH /usr/local/pgsql/lib Replace /usr/local/pgsql/lib with whatever you set --libdir to in step 1. You should put these commands into a shell start-up file such as /etc/profile or ~/.bash_profile. Some good information about the caveats associated with the method can be found at http://www.visi.com/~barr/ldpath.html. On some systems it might be preferable to set the environment variable LD_RUN_PATH before building. If in doubt, refer to the manual pages of your system (perhaps ld.so or rld). If you later on get a message like psql: error in loading shared libraries libpq.so.2.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory then this step was necessary. Simply take care of it then. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Environment Variables If you installed into /usr/local/pgsql or some other location that is not searched for programs by default, you need to add /usr/local/pgsql/bin (or what you set --bindir to in step 1) into your PATH. To do this, add the following to your shell start-up file, such as ~/.bash_profile (or /etc/profile, if you want it to affect every user): PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/bin If you are using csh or tcsh, then use this command: set path = ( /usr/local/pgsql/bin path ) To enable your system to find the man documentation, you need to add a line like the following to a shell start-up file: MANPATH=$MANPATH:/usr/local/pgsql/man The environment variables PGHOST and PGPORT specify to client applications the host and port of the database server, overriding the compiled-in defaults. If you are going to run client applications remotely then it is convenient if every user that plans to use the database sets PGHOST, but it is not required and the settings can be communicated via command line options to most client programs. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Getting Started The following is a quick summary of how to get PostgreSQL up and running once installed. The Administrator's Guide contains more information. 1. Create a user account for the PostgreSQL server. This is the user the server will run as. For production use you should create a separate, unprivileged account ("postgres" is commonly used). If you do not have root access or just want to play around, your own user account is enough, but running the server as root is a security risk and will not work. adduser postgres 2. Create a database installation with the initdb command. To run initdb you must be logged in to your PostgreSQL server account. It will not work as root. root# mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data root# chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data root# su - postgres postgres$ /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data The -D option specifies the location where the data will be stored. You can use any path you want, it does not have to be under the installation directory. Just make sure that the server account can write to the directory (or create it, if it doesn't already exist) before starting initdb, as illustrated here. 3. The previous step should have told you how to start up the database server. Do so now. The command should look something like /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data This will start the server in the foreground. To put the server in the background use something like nohup /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data \ >server.log 2>&1 or , not to the people listed here. OS Processor Version Reported Remarks AIX 4.3.3RS6000 7.1 2001-03-21, Gilles Darold see also () doc/FAQ_AIX BeOS x86 7.1 2001-02-26, Cyril Velter requires new 5.0.4 () BONE networking stack BSD/OS x86 7.1 2001-03-20, Bruce Momjian 4.01 () Compaq Alpha 7.1 2001-03-26, Adriaan Joubert 4.0-5.0, cc and Tru64 () gcc UNIX FreeBSD x86 7.1 2001-03-19, Vince Vielhaber 4.3 () HP/UX PA-RISC 7.1 2001-03-19, 10.20 Tom Lane 32- and 64-bit (), 2001-03-22, on 11.00; see 11.00, 11i Giles Lean also () doc/FAQ_HPUX IRIX MIPS 7.1 2001-03-22, Robert Bruccoleri 32-bit 6.5.11 () compilation model Linux Alpha 7.1 2001-01-23, Ryan Kirkpatrick 2.2.x () Linux armv4l 7.1 2001-02-22, Mark Knox 2.2.x () Linux MIPS 7.1 2001-03-30, Dominic Eidson Cobalt Qube 2.0.x () Linux PPC74xx 7.1 2001-03-19, Tom Lane Apple G3 2.2.18 () Linux S/390 7.1 2000-11-17, Neale Ferguson () Linux Sparc 7.1 2001-01-30, Ryan Kirkpatrick 2.2.15 () Linux x86 7.1 2001-03-19, Thomas Lockhart 2.0.x, 2.2.x, () 2.4.2 MacOS X PPC 7.1 2000-12-11, Peter Bierman Darwin (only) (), 2000-12-11, Beta-2 or higher Daniel Luke () NetBSD Alpha 7.1 2001-03-22, Giles Lean 1.5 () NetBSD arm32 7.1 2001-03-21, Patrick Welche 1.5E () NetBSD m68k 7.0 2000-04-10, Henry B. Hotz Mac 8xx () NetBSD PPC 7.1 2001-04-05, Henry B. Hotz Mac G4 () NetBSD Sparc 7.1 2000-04-05, Matthew Green 32- and 64-bit () builds NetBSD VAX 7.1 2001-03-30, Tom I. Helbekkmo 1.5 () NetBSD x86 7.1 2001-03-23, Giles Lean 1.5 () OpenBSD Sparc 7.1 2001-03-23, Brandon Palmer 2.8 () OpenBSD x86 7.1 2001-03-21, Brandon Palmer 2.8 () SCO x86 7.1 2001-03-19, Larry Rosenman UDK FS compiler; UnixWare () see also 7.1.1 doc/FAQ_SCO Solaris Sparc 7.1 2001-03-22, Marc Fournier see also 2.7-8 (), 2001-03-25, doc/FAQ_Solaris Justin Clift () Solaris x86 7.1 2001-03-27, Mathijs Brands see also 2.8 () doc/FAQ_Solaris SunOS Sparc 7.1 2001-03-23, Tatsuo Ishii 4.1.4 () Windows x86 7.1 2001-03-16, Jason Tishler with Cygwin NT/2000 () toolset, see with doc/FAQ_MSWIN Cygwin Unsupported Platforms. The following platforms have not been verified to work. Platforms listed for version 6.3.x and later should also work with 7.2, but we did not receive explicit confirmation of such at the time this list was compiled. We include these here to let you know that these platforms could be supported if given some attention. OS Processor VersionReported Remarks DGUX m88k 6.3 1998-03-01, Brian E Gallew 6.4 probably OK 5.4R4.11 () MkLinux DR1 PPC750 7.0 2001-04-03, Tatsuo Ishii 7.1 needs OS () update? NextStep x86 6.x 1998-03-01, David Wetzel bit rot () suspected QNX 4.25 x86 7.0 2000-04-01, Dr. Andreas Spinlock code Kardos needs work. See () also doc/FAQ_QNX4. SCO x86 6.5 1999-05-25, Andrew Merrill 7.1 should work, OpenServer () but no reports; 5 see also doc/FAQ_SCO System V R4 m88k 6.2.1 1998-03-01, Doug Winterburn needs new TAS () spinlock code System V R4 MIPS 6.4 1998-10-28, Frank no 64-bit Ridderbusch integer () Ultrix MIPS 7.1 2001-03-26 TAS spinlock code not detected Ultrix VAX 6.x 1998-03-01 No recent reports. Obsolete? Windows 9x, x86 7.1 2001-03-26, Magnus Hagander client-side ME, NT, () libraries (libpq 2000 and psql) or (native) ODBC/JDBC, no server-side; see Administrator's Guide for instructions