PostgreSQL Installation Instructions ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Short Version ./configure gmake su gmake install adduser postgres mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data 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 specific 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 some systems GNU make is the default tool with the name "make".) To test for GNU make enter gmake --version It is recommended to 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 is needed to unpack the distribution in the first place. If you are reading this, you probably already got past that hurdle. * 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 essential. (On NetBSD, the "libedit" library is readline-compatible and is used if "libreadline" is not found.) * GNU Flex and Bison are needed to build from scratch, but they are *not* required when building from a released source package because pre-generated output files are included in released packages. You will need these programs only when building from a CVS tree or if you changed the actual scanner and parser definition files. 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 effort 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 10 MB for the installation directory. An empty database cluster takes about 20 MB, databases take 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 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. Another possibility is "pg_ctl stop". 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 have trouble and need to revert to it. 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 will create 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 require only 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: Care has been taken to make it possible to install PostgreSQL into shared installation locations (such as "/usr/local/include") without interfering with the namespace of the rest of the system. First, the string "/postgresql" is automatically appended to datadir, sysconfdir, 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 documentation will be installed in "/usr/local/doc/postgresql", but if the prefix is "/opt/postgres", then it will be in "/opt/postgres/doc". Second, the installation layout of the C and C++ header files has been reorganized in the 7.2 release. The public header files of the client interfaces are installed into includedir and are namespace-clean. The internal header files and the server header files are installed into private directories under includedir. See the Programmer's Guide for information about how to get at the header files for each interface. Finally, a private subdirectory will also be created, if appropriate, under libdir for dynamically loadable modules. --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 also 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 (including Unicode) and character set encoding conversion. Read the Administrator's Guide for details. Note that some interfaces (such as Tcl or Java) expect all character strings to be in Unicode, so this option will be required to correctly support these interfaces. --enable-nls[=LANGUAGES] Enables Native Language Support (NLS), that is, the ability to display a program's messages in a language other than English. "LANGUAGES" is a space separated list of codes of the languages that you want supported, for example --enable-nls='de fr'. (The intersection between your list and the set of actually provided translations will be computed automatically.) If you do not specify a list, then all available translations are installed. To use this option, you will need an implementation of the gettext API. Some operating systems have this built-in (e.g., Linux, NetBSD, Solaris), for other systems you can download an add-on package from here: http://www.postgresql.org/~petere/gettext.html. If you are using the gettext implementation in the GNU C library then you will additionally need the GNU gettext package for some utility programs. For any of the other implementations you will not need it. --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. Usually the only good reason to select a non-default value is if you intend to run multiple PostgreSQL servers on the same machine. --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 (pgtksh and PgAccess) will be excluded. --with-tclconfig=DIRECTORY, --with-tkconfig=DIRECTORY Tcl/Tk installs the files "tclConfig.sh" and "tkConfig.sh", which contain configuration information needed to build modules interfacing to Tcl or Tk. These files are normally found automatically at their well-known locations, but if you want to use a different version of Tcl or Tk you can specify the directory in which to find them. --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. --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 header 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-pam Build with PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules) support. --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 that 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 recommended for production installations only if you use GCC. But you should always 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 server 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. --enable-depend Enables automatic dependency tracking. With this option, the makefiles are set up so that all affected object files will be rebuilt when any header file is changed. This is useful if you are doing development work, but is just wasted overhead if you intend only to compile once and install. At present, this option will work only if you use GCC. If you prefer a C or C++ compiler different from the one "configure" picks then you can set the environment variables CC or 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='-O2 -pipe' ./configure 2. Build To start the build, type gmake (Remember to use GNU make.) The build may take anywhere from 5 minutes to half an hour depending on your hardware. 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 (This won't work as root; do it as an unprivileged user.) 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 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 installation provides only the header files needed for client application development. If you plan to do any server-side program development (such as custom functions or data types 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 installation 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/include install gmake -C src/interfaces install gmake -C doc install To undo the installation use the command "gmake uninstall". However, this will not remove any created 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 files 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. If you perform a build and then discover that your configure options were wrong, or if you change anything that configure investigates (for example, you install GNU Readline), then it's a good idea to do "gmake distclean" before reconfiguring and rebuilding. Without this, your changes in configuration choices may not propagate everywhere they need to. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 BSD/OS, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital 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 this 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. If you are on BSD/OS, Linux, or SunOS 4 and you have root access you can run /sbin/ldconfig /usr/local/pgsql/lib (or equivalent directory) after installation to enable the run-time linker to find the shared libraries faster. Refer to the manual page of "ldconfig" for more information. On FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD the command is /sbin/ldconfig -m /usr/local/pgsql/lib instead. Other systems are not known to have an equivalent command. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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 whatever 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=/usr/local/pgsql/bin:$PATH If you are using "csh" or "tcsh", then use this command: set path = ( /usr/local/pgsql/bin $path ) To enable your system to find the man documentation, you need to add a line like the following to a shell start-up file: MANPATH=/usr/local/pgsql/man:$MANPATH 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. This is not required, however: 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 RS6000 7.2 2001-12-19, Andreas Zeugswetter see also (), doc/FAQ_AIX Tatsuo Ishii () BeOS x86 7.2 2001-11-29, Cyril Velter 5.0.4 () BSD/OS x86 7.2 2001-11-27, Bruce Momjian 4.2 () FreeBSDAlpha 7.2 2001-12-18, Chris Kings-Lynne () FreeBSDx86 7.2 2001-11-14, Chris Kings-Lynne () HP-UX PA-RISC 7.2 2001-11-29, Joseph Conway 11.00 and 10.20; (), Tom see also Lane () doc/FAQ_HPUX IRIX MIPS 7.2 2001-11-28, Luis Amigo 6.5.13, MIPSPro () 7.30 Linux Alpha 7.2 2001-11-16, Tom Lane 2.2.18; tested at () SourceForge Linux armv4l 7.2 2001-12-10, Mark Knox 2.2.x () Linux MIPS 7.2 2001-11-15, Hisao Shibuya 2.0.x; Cobalt () Qube2 Linux PlayStation 7.2 2001-12-12, Permaine Cheung #undef 2 ) HAS_TEST_AND_SET, slock_t Linux PPC74xx 7.2 2001-11-16, Tom Lane 2.2.18; Apple G3 () Linux S/390 7.2 2001-12-12, Permaine Cheung ) Linux Sparc 7.2 2001-11-28, Doug McNaught 2.2.19 () Linux x86 7.2 2001-11-15, Thomas Lockhart 2.0.x, 2.2.x, () 2.4.x MacOS XPPC 7.2 2001-11-28, Gavin Sherry 10.1.x () NetBSD Alpha 7.2 2001-11-20, Thomas Thai 1.5W () 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 7.2 2001-11-28, Bill Studenmund 1.5 () NetBSD Sparc 7.2 2001-12-03, Matthew Green 32- and 64-bit () builds NetBSD VAX 7.1 2001-03-30, Tom I. Helbekkmo 1.5 () NetBSD x86 7.2 2001-11-28, Bill Studenmund 1.5 () OpenBSDSparc 7.2 2001-11-27, Brandon Palmer 3.0 () OpenBSDx86 7.2 2001-11-26, Brandon Palmer 3.0 () Open x86 7.2 2001-11-28, OU-8 Larry Rosenman see also UNIX (), UW-7 Olivier doc/FAQ_SCO Prenant () QNX 4 x86 7.2 2001-12-10, Bernd Tegge 4.25; see also RTOS () doc/FAQ_QNX4 SolarisSparc 7.2 2001-11-12, Andrew Sullivan 2.6-8; see also () doc/FAQ_Solaris Solarisx86 7.2 2001-11-28, Martin Renters 2.8; see also () doc/FAQ_Solaris SunOS 4Sparc 7.2 2001-12-04, Tatsuo Ishii () Tru64 Alpha 7.2 2001-11-26, Alessio Bragadini 5.0; 4.0g with cc UNIX (), Bernd and gcc Tegge () Windowsx86 7.2 2001-12-13, Dave Page with Cygwin; see (), doc/FAQ_MSWIN Jason Tishler () Windowsx86 7.2 2001-12-10, Dave Page native is () client-side only; see Administrator's Guide Unsupported Platforms: The following platforms are either known not to work, or they used to work in a previous release and we did not receive explicit confirmation of a successful test with version 7.2 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 Version Reported Remarks DG/UX m88k 6.3 1998-03-01, Brian E Gallew no recent 5.4R4.11 () reports MkLinux DR1PPC750 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 RTOS v6x86 7.2 2001-11-20, Igor Kovalenko patches () available in archives, but too late for 7.2 SCO x86 6.5 1999-05-25, Andrew Merrill 7.2 should OpenServer () work, but no 5 reports; see also doc/FAQ_SCO System V R4m88k 6.2.1 1998-03-01, Doug Winterburn needs new () TAS spinlock code System V R4MIPS 6.4 1998-10-28, Frank Ridderbusch no recent () reports Ultrix MIPS 7.1 2001-03-26 TAS spinlock code not detected Ultrix VAX 6.x 1998-03-01