README.rpm-dist
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Version 4.0, for the PostgreSQL 7.2-1PGDG RPMset.
Lamar Owen <lamar.owen@wgcr.org>
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Contents:
0.) Quick -i note.
1.) Introduction, QuickStart, and credits
2.) PostgreSQL RPM packages and rationale
3.) Upgrading from an older version of PostgreSQL without losing data.
4.) Regression Testing
5.) Starting postmaster automatically on startup
6.) Grand Unified Configuration(GUC) File.
7.) Rebuilding the source RPM.
8.) Contrib files.
9.) Logging set up
10.) Further Information Resource
QUICK '-i' NOTE
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The postmaster '-i' option is NOT used by default in the initscript shipped
with these RPMs. Please do NOT modify the initscript to add the '-i' back
in -- it will get overwritten on the next package upgrade. Rather, see the
section below on the Grand Unified Configuration file, which includes the
recommended way to get '-i' functionality back.
INTRODUCTION
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This document exists to explain the layout of the RPM's for PostgreSQL, to
explain how to migrate from an older version, and to explain WHY it can be
so difficult to upgrade PostgreSQL.
This document is written to be applicable to version 7.2 of PostgreSQL,
which is the current version of the RPM's as of this writing.
Official PostgreSQL Global Development Group RPM's will from version 7.1.2
on carry a 'PGDG' after the release number. Other RPMset's as distributed
with Linux distributions may have a different release number and initials.
It is preferable for the distribution-specific set to be the one used, as
the PGDG set is intentionally generic. So, if your distro has a set of RPMs,
use them in preference. If you want to stay up-to-date on the PostgreSQL
core itself, use the PGDG generic set -- but understand that it is a
GENERIC set.
These RPMs are designed to be LSB-compliant -- if you find this not to be the
case, please let me know by way of the pgsql-ports@postgresql.org mailing
list.
QUICKSTART
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If this is an upgrade, please go to section 3, UPGRADING.
If this is a fresh installation, simply start the postmaster using:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql start (on RedHat and TurboLinux)
The file /var/lib/pgsql/.bash_profile is now packaged to help with the
setting of environment variables. You may edit this file, and it won't be
overwritten during an upgrade. However, enhancements and bugfixes may be added
to this file, so be sure to check .bash_profile.rpmnew after upgrading.
The user 'postgres' is created during installation of the server subpackage.
This user by default is UID and GID 26. The user has the default shell set to
bash, and the home directory set to /var/lib/pgsql. This user also has no
default password -- in order to be able to su to from a non-root account
or login as 'postgres' you will need to set a password using passwd.
CREDITS
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Thomas Lockhart
Uncle George
Ryan Kirkpatrick
Trond Eivind Glomsrød
Mark Knox
Mike Mascari
Nicolas Huillard
Karl DeBisschop
Roger Luethi
Jeff Johnson
Reinhard Max
Peter Eisentraut
POSTGRESQL RPM PACKAGES AND RATIONALE.
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On RedHat Linux, prior to version 6.5, PostgreSQL was packaged in RPM form in
three (or four) packages:
postgresql: The server and documentation
postgresql-clients: The client libraries, the cli, and the tcl interface
postgresql-devel: Development libraries (for the client-side)
postgresql-data: A sample database -- not shipped with the 6.4 RPMS.
However, it was decided that a different split would be more appropriate for
users. The 7.0 splitup allows more flexibility in installation, as well as
making the new clients into their own packages. The new packages are:
postgresql: Some clients and libraries, and documentation
postgresql-server: Server executables and data files
postgresql-devel: Client-side development libraries
postgresql-tcl: TCL/TK client libraries and the pgaccess client
postgresql-perl: PERL client module
postgresql-python: The PygreSQL client library
postgresql-odbc: Linux ODBC client (not required to use ODBC from Win95)
postgresql-jdbc: JAR of the JDBC client
postgresql-test: The regression tests and associated files.
For version 7.0.x, another package is being shipped, and one package has been
trimmed:
postgresql-tk: Tk client and pgaccess.
postgresql-tcl: Tcl client and PL ONLY.
For version 7.1, more packages are being shipped:
postgresql-libs: client shared libraries.
postgresql-docs: extra documentation,such as the SGML doc sources.
postgresql-contrib: The contrib source tree, as well as selected binaries.
For SuSE Linux <= 7.0, the packages are named differently, but with the same
functionality. Here is a mapping:
SuSE: RedHat:
----- -----------------
postgres postgresql
pg_serv postgresql-server
pg_devel postgresql-devel
pg_tcl postgresql-tcl
pg_perl postgresql-perl
pg_pyth postgresql-python
pg_odbc postgresql-odbc
pg_jdbc postgresql-jdbc
pg_test postgresql-test
There are other changes to the SuSE packages to make them conform to the
SuSE packaging standards. SuSE Linux has been shipping their own packages.
While the repackaging will initially cause some confusion, it makes it
possible to set up a RedHat linux machine to be only a client -- the server
is no longer required. The clients were split out -- after all, a person who
needs the perl client may very well not need the tcl client, etc. And, the
regression tests were added to give some confidence of the suitability of
PostgreSQL, as well as the stability of the server machine. Additionally,
the regression tests can be used to help find hardware errors.
RPM FILE LOCATIONS.
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In compliance with the Linux FHS, the PostgreSQL RPM's install files in a manner
not consistent with most of the PostgreSQL documentation. According to the
standard PostgreSQL documentation, PostgreSQL is installed under the directory
/usr/local/pgsql, with executables, source, and data existing in various
subdirectories.
Different distributions have different ideas of some of these file locations.
In particular, the documentation directory can be /usr/doc, /usr/doc/packages,
/usr/share/doc, /usr/share/doc/packages, or some other similar path. The
RedHat 7 locations are listed below. On SuSE <7.1, substitute 'postgres' for
'postgresql' below, and 'pg_tk' for 'postgresql-tk' below.
However, the RPM's install the files like this:
Executables: /usr/bin
Libaries: /usr/lib
Documentation: /usr/share/doc/postgresql-x.y.z
Contrib: /usr/share/doc/postgresql-x.y.z/contrib
Source: not installed
Data: /var/lib/pgsql/data
Backup area: /var/lib/pgsql/backup
Templates: /usr/share/pgsql
Procedural Languages: /usr/lib/pgsql
TK client docs: /usr/share/doc/postgresql-tk-x.y.z
Development Headers: /usr/include/pgsql
Other shared data: /usr/share/pgsql
Regression tests: /usr/lib/pgsql/test/regress (in the -test package)
Documentation SGML: /usr/share/doc/postgresql-docs-x.y.z
The above list references the Red Hat 7.x structure. These locations may
change for other distributions. Use of 'rpm -ql' for each package is
recommended as the 'Official' location source.
While it may seem gratuitous to place these files in different locations, the
FHS requires it -- distributions should not ever touch /usr/local. It may
also seem like more work to keep track of where everything is -- but, that's
the beauty of RPM -- you don't have to keep track of the files, RPM does it
for you.
These RPM's are meant to be LSB-compliant. If you find errors in them that
cause thembe be non-compliant, please let me know.
UPGRADING.
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CAUTION: While a semi-automatic upgrade process has been implemented, it is
STRONGLY recommended that a full dump of your database (using pg_dumpall) is
performed BEFORE upgrading the RPMs! If you have already done the upgrade
with the RPM, and want to return to your previous version to do the dump,
find the old RPM's and use 'rpm -U --oldpackage' to downgrade.
I cannot overemphasize this precaution.
NOTE: moving your existing data from /var/lib/pgsql to /var/lib/pgsql/data is
not currently automatic -- you will need to do this yourself at this release!
This change occurred between 6.5.3 and 7.0, so upgrading from prior to 7.0 to
7.0 or later might be difficult.
NOTE: This program is not included in the packages distributed with
Red Hat Linux. The releasenotes specifies a dump before a system
upgrade.
The single biggest problem with upgrading PostgreSQL RPM's has been the lack
of a reasonably automated upgrade process. PostgreSQL has the property of
the binary on-disk database format changing between major versions (like
between 6.3 and 6.4). However, a change from 6.5 to 6.5.3 does not change
the on-disk format.
This property (feature, misfeature, bug, whatever) has been a known property of
PostgreSQL since before it was called PostgreSQL -- it has always been this
way. However, the means by which an upgrade is performed is not readily
performed in a fully automated fashion, as a "dump-initdb-restore" cycle has
to be performed. This doesn't appear to be too difficult -- however, dumping
the old database requires the old executables -- and, if you've already done
an rpm -U postgresql* (or upgraded from an older version of RedHat and didn't
specifically exclude the postgresql rpms), you no longer have the older
executables to dump your data. And your data is useless (until you reinstall
the old version, that is). All RPM's prior to late releases of version 6.5.
1 have this upgrade issue.
The newest RPM's for PostgreSQL attempt to make your job in upgrading a little
easier. First, during the installation of the new RPM's, a copy is made of
all the executable files and libraries necessary to make a backup of your data.
Second, the initialization script in the new postgresql-server package detects
the version of any database found -- if the version is old, then the startup
of the new version is aborted. However, if no database is found, a new one
is made.
One thing must be remembered -- due to the restructuring of the PostgreSQL
RPM's, you will have to manually select the postgresql-server package if you
want the server -- it is not installed by default in an upgrade. You can either
select it during the upgrade/install, or you can mount your RedHat CD and
install manually with rpm -i.
To facilitate upgrading, the postgresql-dump utility has been provided. Look
at the man page for postgresql-dump to see its usage. All executables to
restore the immediately prior version of the PostgreSQL database are placed in
the directory /usr/lib/pgsql/backup, and are accessed by the postgresql-dump
script. The directory /usr/lib/pgsql/backup is owned by the postgres user --
you can use this directory to hold dump files and preserve directories.
The basic sequence is:
(as user postgres):
postgresql-dump -t /var/lib/pgsql/backup/db.bak -p /var/lib/pgsql/backup/old -d
(you can abort the ASCII dump with 'Q', as it uses more) Then, (as user root):
service postgresql start
(which will automatically create a new database structure) And finally,
(as user postgres):
psql -e template1 </var/lib/pgsql/backup/db.bak
Once you are satisfied that the data has been restored properly, you may remove
the dump file (/var/lib/pgsql/backup/db.bak) and the preserve directory
(/var/lib/pgsql/backup/old).
EXPLANATION OF STEPS:
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postgresql-dump: dumps the old database structure out, using the postmaster and
the backend saved during the rpm upgrade. This step MUST be done as user
postgres.
/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql start: initializes the new database structure that
the data from your old version will be restored into, does some sanity
checking, and starts the postmaster. Due to the nature of some of the tasks,
this step must be done as root.
psql -e: restores the old database into the new structure created by the
previous step.
NOTE:
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If you have added tables, indices, or basically anything to the template1
database which is the default administrative database this script will NOT
upgrade your database. As a matter of fact you will lose your data included
in the template1 database. Please look at www.postgresql.org for information
on upgrading the template1 database. This is a known bug in the PostgreSQL
pg_dump and pg_dumpall utilities.
REGRESSION TESTING
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One of the features of the newer RPM sets is the capability to perform the
regression tests. These tests stress your database installation and produce
results that give you assurances that the installation is complete, and that
your database machine is up to the task.
To run the regression tests under the RPM installation, make sure that
postmaster has been started (if not, su to root and execute the
'/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql start' init script), cd to
/usr/lib/pgsql/test/regress, su to postgres, and execute the command line:
time ./pg_regress.sh --schedule=parallel_schedule
This command line will start the regression tests and will both show the
results to the screen and store the results in the file regress.out.
It will also give you a crude benchmark of how fast your machine performs.
If tests fail, please see the file regression.diffs in that directory. If
you need help interpreting that file, contact the pgsql-ports list on
postgresql.org.
There are some tests that will almost always fail with RedHat Linux 5.x and 6.x
installations. The geometry, float8, and on occassion the random test will
fail. These failures are normal for RedHat 5.2 and 6.1. For RedHat 6.1 with
certain i18n settings, there will be other tests fail.
For 7.1RC1, all 76 tests passed on RedHat 6.2 and RedHat 7.0. This
was accomplished by fiddling with the locale settings. In version 7.1.2 this
capability was removed -- you need to set your locale to 'C' before executing
the first postmaster startup, or many more regression tests will fail.
For interpretation of the regression tests, see the PostgreSQL documentation.
STARTING POSTMASTER AUTOMATICALLY AT SYSTEM STARTUP
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RedHat Linux uses the System V Init package. A startup script for PostgreSQL
is provided in the server package, as /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql. To start
the postmaster, with sanity checking, as root, run
/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql start
to shut postmaster down,
/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql stop
There are other parameters to this script -- /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql for a
listing.
To get this script to run at system startup or any time the system switches into
runlevels 3, 4, or 5, run:
chkconfig --add postgresql
chkconfig --level 345 postgresql on
and the proper symlinks will be created. Check the chkconfig man page for more
information. Note that this is manual -- while the startup script can include
tags to allow chkconfig to automatically perform the symlinking, this is not
done at this time.
SuSE has maintained their own RPMset for some time -- their documentation
supercedes any found in this file.
GRAND UNIFIED CONFIGURATION (GUC) FILE
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The PostgreSQL server has many tunable parameters -- the file
/var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf is the master configuration file for the
whole system.
The RPM ships with the default file -- you will need to tune the
parameters for your installation. In particular, you might want to allow
TCP/IP socket connections -- in order to allow these, you will need to edit
the postgresql.conf file. The line in question contains the string
'tcpip_socket' --want to both uncomment the line and set the parameter to true
in order to get the TCP/IP socket to open.
This is the same behavior the -i command line switch provides. It is
preferable to use the postgresql.conf file, however, as future versions
of the RPMset will allow multiple postmaster instances -- and that will only
be possible thanks to the decoupling of settings out to each datadir.
REBUILDING FROM SOURCE RPM
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If your distribution is not supported by the binary RPM's from PostgreSQL.org,
you will need to rebuild from the source RPM. Download the .src.rpm for this
release. You will need to be root to rebuild, unless you have already set up
a non-root build environment.
Install the source RPM with rpm -i, then CD to the rpm building area (on RedHat
this is /usr/src/redhat by default). You will have to have a full development
environment to rebuild the full RPM set.
This release of the RPMset includes the ability to conditionally build
sets of packages. The parameters, their defaults, and the meanings are:
beta 0 #build with cassert and do not strip the binaries
perl 1 #build the postgresql-perl package.
tcl 1 #build the postgresql-tcl package.
tkpkg 1 #build the postgresql-tk package.
odbc 1 #build the postgresql-odbc package.
jdbc 1 #build the postgresql-jdbc package.
test 1 #build the postgresql-test package.
python 1 #build the postgresql-python package.
pltcl 1 #build the postgresql-pltcl package.
forceplperl 0 #don't force a build of pl/perl over libperl.a
plperl 0 #don't build the postgresql-plperl package.
ssl 1 #use OpenSSL support.
kerberos 1 #use Kerberos 5 support.
nls 1 #build with national language support.
enable_mb 1 #enable multibyte encodings.
pgaccess 1 #build the pgaccess client, part of postgresql-tk.
newintarray 0 #substitute a newer intarray contrib.
To use these defines, invoke a rebuild like this:
rpm --rebuild --define 'perl 0' --define 'tcl 0' --define 'tkpkg 0'\
--define 'test 0' --define 'newintarray 1' --define 'kerberos 0' \
postgresql-7.1.3-1PGDG.src.rpm
This line would disable the perl, tcl, tk, and test subpackages, enable the
newer intarray code, and disable kerberos support.
More of these conditionals will be added in the future.
CONTRIB FILES
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The contents of the contrib tree are packaged into the -contrib subpackage
and are compiled and placed into /usr/lib/pgsql/contrib with no further
processing. Please see each directory under contrib for details on how to
install and use.
LOGGING SET UP
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To get rollable syslog set up, see the documentation for the file
postgresql.conf, by default in the directory /var/lib/pgsql/data, as relates to
the syslog options. Then, add a line to /etc/syslog.conf, using the man page
for syslog.conf as a source. Example:
If postgresql.conf has the following lines for the syslog settings:
syslog = 1 # range 0-2
syslog_facility = 'LOCAL0'
syslog_ident = 'postgres'
Then you need to add the line to /etc/syslog.conf:
local0.* /var/log/postgresql
Then set up an entry in /etc/logrotate.d to roll postgresql the way you want it
rolled.
MORE INFORMATION
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You can get more information at http://www.postgresql.org
Please help make this packaging better -- let me know if you find problems, or
better ways of doing things. You can reach me by e-mail at
pgsql-ports@postgresql.org -- please include an [RPM] string in the subject, as
I use automatic mail folder processing to put mail in the right place.
SuSE information is available at SuSE's website and information contacts.
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