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 determine values for various
system dependent variables and detect any quirks of your
operating system, and finally will create several files in the
build tree to record what it found. You can also run
configure in a directory outside the source
tree, if you want to keep the build directory separate. This
procedure is also called a
VPATH
build. Here's how:
mkdir build_dircd build_dir/path/to/source/tree/configure [options go here]gmake
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. However,
if you leave these with their defaults, the installation will be
relocatable, meaning you can move the directory after
installation. (The man and doc
locations are not affected by this.)
For relocatable installs, you might want to use
configure's --disable-rpath
option. Also, you will need to tell the operating system how
to find the shared libraries.
--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.
--sysconfdir=DIRECTORY
Sets the directory for various configuration files,
PREFIX/etc by default.
--libdir=DIRECTORY
Sets the location to install libraries and dynamically loadable
modules. The default is
EXEC-PREFIX/lib.
--includedir=DIRECTORY
Sets the directory for installing C and C++ header files. The
default is PREFIX/include.
--datarootdir=DIRECTORY
Sets the root directory for various types of read-only data
files. This only sets the default for some of the following
options. The default is
PREFIX/share.
--datadir=DIRECTORY
Sets the directory for read-only data files used by the
installed programs. The default is
DATAROOTDIR. Note that this has
nothing to do with where your database files will be placed.
--localedir=DIRECTORY
Sets the directory for installing locale data, in particular
message translation catalog files. The default is
DATAROOTDIR/locale.
--mandir=DIRECTORY
The man pages that come with PostgreSQL will be installed under
this directory, in their respective
manx subdirectories.
The default is DATAROOTDIR/man.
--docdir=DIRECTORY
Sets the root directory for installing documentation files,
except "man" pages. This only sets the default for
the following options. The default value for this option is
DATAROOTDIR/doc/postgresql.
--htmldir=DIRECTORY
The HTML-formatted documentation for
PostgreSQL will be installed under
this directory. The default is
DATAROOTDIR.
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. The public C
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 documentation of each interface for information about how to
access its header files. 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.
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.
Enables Native Language Support (NLS),
that is, the ability to display a program's messages in a
language other than English.
LANGUAGES is an optional 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; see above.
--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 PL/Perl server-side language.
--with-python
Build the PL/Python server-side language.
--with-tcl
Build the PL/Tcl server-side language.
--with-tclconfig=DIRECTORY
Tcl installs the file tclConfig.sh, which
contains configuration information needed to build modules
interfacing to Tcl. This file is normally found automatically
at a well-known location, but if you want to use a different
version of Tcl you can specify the directory in which to look
for it.
--with-gssapi
Build with support for GSSAPI authentication. On many
systems, the GSSAPI (usually a part of the Kerberos installation)
system is not installed in a location
that is searched by default (e.g., /usr/include,
/usr/lib), so you must use the options
--with-includes and --with-libraries in
addition to this option. configure will check
for the required header files and libraries to make sure that
your GSSAPI installation is sufficient before proceeding.
--with-krb5
Build with support for Kerberos 5 authentication. On many
systems, the Kerberos system is not installed in a location
that is searched by default (e.g., /usr/include,
/usr/lib), so you must use the options
--with-includes and --with-libraries in
addition to this option. 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 default name of the Kerberos service principal (also used
by GSSAPI).
postgres is the default. There's usually no
reason to change this unless you have a Windows environment,
in which case it must be set to upper case
POSTGRES.
--with-openssl
Build with support for SSL (encrypted)
connections. This requires the OpenSSL
package to be installed. 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.
--with-ldap
Build with LDAP
support for authentication and connection parameter lookup (see
Section 31.16 and
Section 19.3.8 for more information). On Unix,
this requires the OpenLDAP package to be
installed. On Windows, the default WinLDAP
library is used. configure will check for the required
header files and libraries to make sure that your
OpenLDAP installation is sufficient before
proceeding.
--without-readline
Prevents use of the Readline library
(and libedit as well). This option disables
command-line editing and history in
psql, so it is not recommended.
--with-libedit-preferred
Favors the use of the BSD-licensed libedit library
rather than GPL-licensed Readline. This option
is significant only if you have both libraries installed; the
default in that case is to use Readline.
--with-bonjour
Build with Bonjour support. This requires Bonjour support
in your operating system. Recommended on Mac OS X.
--with-ossp-uuid
Build components using the OSSP UUID
library. Specifically, build the
uuid-ossp module,
which provides functions to generate
UUIDs.
--with-libxml
Build with libxml (enables SQL/XML support). Libxml version 2.6.23 or
later is required for this feature.
Libxml installs a program xml2-config that
can be used to detect the required compiler and linker
options. PostgreSQL will use it automatically if found. To
specify a libxml installation at an unusual location, you can
either set the environment variable
XML2_CONFIG to point to the
xml2-config program belonging to the
installation, or use the options
--with-includes and
--with-libraries.
--with-libxslt
Use libxslt when building the
xml2
module. xml2 relies on this library
to perform XSL transformations of XML.
--disable-integer-datetimes
Disable support for 64-bit integer storage for timestamps and
intervals, and store datetime values as floating-point
numbers instead. Floating-point datetime storage was the
default in PostgreSQL releases
prior to 8.4, but it is now deprecated, because it does not
support microsecond precision for the full range of
timestamp values. However, integer-based
datetime storage requires a 64-bit integer type. Therefore,
this option can be used when no such type is available, or
for compatibility with applications written for prior
versions of PostgreSQL. See
Section 8.5
for more information.
--disable-float4-byval
Disable passing float4 values "by value", causing them
to be passed "by reference" instead. This option costs
performance, but may be needed for compatibility with old
user-defined functions that are written in C and use the
"version 0" calling convention. A better long-term
solution is to update any such functions to use the
"version 1" calling convention.
--disable-float8-byval
Disable passing float8 values "by value", causing them
to be passed "by reference" instead. This option costs
performance, but may be needed for compatibility with old
user-defined functions that are written in C and use the
"version 0" calling convention. A better long-term
solution is to update any such functions to use the
"version 1" calling convention.
Note that this option affects not only float8, but also int8 and some
related types such as timestamp.
On 32-bit platforms, --disable-float8-byval is the default
and it is not allowed to select --enable-float8-byval.
--with-segsize=SEGSIZE
Set the segment size, in gigabytes. Large tables are
divided into multiple operating-system files, each of size equal
to the segment size. This avoids problems with file size limits
that exist on many platforms. The default segment size, 1 gigabyte,
is safe on all supported platforms. If your operating system has
"largefile" support (which most do, nowadays), you can use
a larger segment size. This can be helpful to reduce the number of
file descriptors consumed when working with very large tables.
But be careful not to select a value larger than is supported
by your platform and the file systems you intend to use. Other
tools you might wish to use, such as tar, could
also set limits on the usable file size.
It is recommended, though not absolutely required, that this value
be a power of 2.
Note that changing this value requires an initdb.
--with-blocksize=BLOCKSIZE
Set the block size, in kilobytes. This is the unit
of storage and I/O within tables. The default, 8 kilobytes,
is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful
in special cases.
The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 32 (kilobytes).
Note that changing this value requires an initdb.
--with-wal-segsize=SEGSIZE
Set the WAL segment size, in megabytes. This is
the size of each individual file in the WAL log. It may be useful
to adjust this size to control the granularity of WAL log shipping.
The default size is 16 megabytes.
The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 64 (megabytes).
Note that changing this value requires an initdb.
--with-wal-blocksize=BLOCKSIZE
Set the WAL block size, in kilobytes. This is the unit
of storage and I/O within the WAL log. The default, 8 kilobytes,
is suitable for most situations; but other values may be useful
in special cases.
The value must be a power of 2 between 1 and 64 (kilobytes).
Note that changing this value requires an initdb.
--disable-spinlocks
Allow the build to succeed even if PostgreSQL
has no CPU spinlock support for the platform. The lack of
spinlock support will result in poor performance; therefore,
this option should only be used if the build aborts and
informs you that the platform lacks spinlock support. If this
option is required to build PostgreSQL on
your platform, please report the problem to the
PostgreSQL developers.
--disable-thread-safety
Disable the thread-safety of client libraries. This prevents
concurrent threads in libpq and
ECPG programs from safely controlling
their private connection handles.
--with-system-tzdata=DIRECTORY
PostgreSQL includes its own time zone database,
which it requires for date and time operations. This time zone
database is in fact compatible with the IANA time zone
database provided by many operating systems such as FreeBSD,
Linux, and Solaris, so it would be redundant to install it again.
When this option is used, the system-supplied time zone database
in DIRECTORY is used instead of the one
included in the PostgreSQL source distribution.
DIRECTORY must be specified as an
absolute path. /usr/share/zoneinfo is a
likely directory on some operating systems. Note that the
installation routine will not detect mismatching or erroneous time
zone data. If you use this option, you are advised to run the
regression tests to verify that the time zone data you have
pointed to works correctly with PostgreSQL.
This option is mainly aimed at binary package distributors
who know their target operating system well. The main
advantage of using this option is that the PostgreSQL package
won't need to be upgraded whenever any of the many local
daylight-saving time rules change. Another advantage is that
PostgreSQL can be cross-compiled more straightforwardly if the
time zone database files do not need to be built during the
installation.
--without-zlib
Prevents use of the Zlib library. This disables
support for compressed archives in pg_dump
and pg_restore.
This option is only intended for those rare systems where this
library is not available.
--enable-debug
Compiles all programs and libraries with debugging symbols.
This means that you can run the programs in 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 might 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-coverage
If using GCC, all programs and libraries are compiled with
code coverage testing instrumentation. When run, they
generate files in the build directory with code coverage
metrics.
See Section 30.4
for more information. This option is for use only with GCC
and when doing development work.
--enable-profiling
If using GCC, all programs and libraries are compiled so they
can be profiled. On backend exit, a subdirectory will be created
that contains the gmon.out file for use in profiling.
This option is for use only with GCC and when doing development work.
--enable-cassert
Enables assertion checks in the server, which test for
many "cannot happen" conditions. This is invaluable for
code development purposes, but the tests can slow down the
server significantly.
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. 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 only works with GCC.
--enable-dtrace
Compiles PostgreSQL with support for the
dynamic tracing tool DTrace.
See Section 27.4
for more information.
To point to the dtrace program, the
environment variable DTRACE can be set. This
will often be necessary because dtrace is
typically installed under /usr/sbin,
which might not be in the path.
Extra command-line options for the dtrace program
can be specified in the environment variable
DTRACEFLAGS. On Solaris,
to include DTrace support in a 64-bit binary, you must specify
DTRACEFLAGS="-64" to configure. For example,
using the GCC compiler:
If you prefer a C compiler different from the one
configure picks, you can set the
environment variable CC to the program of your choice.
By default, configure will pick
gcc if available, else the platform's
default (usually cc). Similarly, you can override the
default compiler flags if needed with the CFLAGS variable.
You can specify environment variables on the
configure command line, for example:
./configure CC=/opt/bin/gcc CFLAGS='-O2 -pipe'
Here is a list of the significant variables that can be set in
this manner:
BISON
Bison program
CC
C compiler
CFLAGS
options to pass to the C compiler
CPP
C preprocessor
CPPFLAGS
options to pass to the C preprocessor
DTRACE
location of the dtrace program
DTRACEFLAGS
options to pass to the dtrace program
FLEX
Flex program
LDFLAGS
options to use when linking either executables or shared libraries
LDFLAGS_EX
additional options for linking executables only
LDFLAGS_SL
additional options for linking shared libraries only
MSGFMT
msgfmt program for native language support
PERL
Full path name of the Perl interpreter. This will be used to
determine the dependencies for building PL/Perl.
PYTHON
Full path name of the Python interpreter. This will be used to
determine the dependencies for building PL/Python. Also,
whether Python 2 or 3 is specified here (or otherwise
implicitly chosen) determines which variant of the PL/Python
language becomes available. See
Section 42.1
for more information.
TCLSH
Full path name of the Tcl interpreter. This will be used to
determine the dependencies for building PL/Tcl, and it will
be substituted into Tcl scripts.
XML2_CONFIG
xml2-config program used to locate the
libxml installation.
Build
To start the build, type:
gmake
(Remember to use GNU make.) The build
will take a few minutes depending on your
hardware. The last line displayed should be:
All of PostgreSQL successfully made. Ready to install.
If you want to build everything that can be built, including the
documentation (HTML and man pages), and the additional modules
(contrib), type instead:
gmake world
The last line displayed should be:
PostgreSQL, contrib, and documentation successfully made. Ready to install.
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.)
Chapter 30 contains
detailed information about interpreting the test results. You can
repeat this test at any later time by issuing the same command.
Installing the Files
Note: If you are upgrading an existing system be sure to read
Section 17.6
which has instructions about upgrading a
cluster.
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 can create the target
directories in advance and arrange for appropriate permissions to
be granted.
To install the documentation (HTML and man pages), enter:
gmake install-docs
If you built the world above, type instead:
gmake install-world
This also installs the documentation.
You can use gmake install-strip instead of
gmake install to strip the executable files and
libraries as they are installed. This will save some space. If
you built with debugging support, stripping will effectively
remove the debugging support, so it should only be done if
debugging is no longer needed. install-strip
tries to do a reasonable job saving space, but it does not have
perfect knowledge of how to strip every unneeded byte from an
executable file, so if you want to save all the disk space you
possibly can, you will have to do manual work.
The standard installation provides all the header files needed for client
application development as well as for server-side program
development, such as custom functions or data types written in C.
(Prior to PostgreSQL 8.0, a separate gmake
install-all-headers command was needed for the latter, but this
step has been folded into the standard install.)
Client-only installation: If you want to install only the client applications and
interface libraries, then you can use these commands:
src/bin has a few binaries for server-only use,
but they are small.
Registering eventlog on Windows: To register a Windowseventlog
library with the operating system, issue this command after installation:
regsvr32 pgsql_library_directory/pgevent.dll
This creates registry entries used by the event viewer.
Uninstallation: To undo the installation use the command gmake
uninstall. However, this will not remove any created directories.
Cleaning: After the installation you can free disk space by removing the built
files from the source tree with the command gmake
clean. 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 within the same source tree you must do
this and re-configure for each platform. (Alternatively, use
a separate build tree for each platform, so that the source tree
remains unmodified.)
If you perform a build and then discover that your configure
options were wrong, or if you change anything that configure
investigates (for example, software upgrades), then it's a good
idea to do gmake distclean before reconfiguring and
rebuilding. Without this, your changes in configuration choices
might not propagate everywhere they need to.