README.rpm-dist ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Version 9.1, for the PostgreSQL 9.1 RPM set. Devrim Gündüz <devrim@gunduz.org> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: 1.) Introduction and QuickStart 2.) Upgrading an installation 3.) PostgreSQL RPM packages and rationale 4.) Starting multiple postmasters 5.) Regression Testing 6.) Starting postmaster automatically on startup 7.) Grand Unified Configuration(GUC) File 8.) Logging set up 9.) Rebuilding from the source RPM 10.) Contrib files 11.) Further Information Resource INTRODUCTION ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- This document exists to explain the layout of the RPMs for PostgreSQL, to describe various RPM specifics, and to document special features found in the RPMset. This document is written to be applicable to version 9.1 of PostgreSQL, which is the current version of the RPMs as of this writing. More to the point, versions prior to 9.1 are not documented here. This document is intended for use only with the RPMs supplied in Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS and Fedora. Note that there are also "PGDG" RPMs available directly from the upstream PostgreSQL project. Those are slightly different. QUICKSTART ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For a fresh installation, you will need to initialize the cluster first. Run: postgresql-setup initdb as root, and it will prepare a new database cluster for you. Then you will need to start PostgreSQL. Again as root, run: systemctl start postgresql.service This command will start a postmaster that willl listen on localhost and Unix socket 5432 only. Edit /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf if you want to allow remote access -- see the section on Grand Unified Configuration. You will probably also want to do systemctl enable postgresql.service so that the postmaster is automatically started during future reboots. The file /var/lib/pgsql/.bash_profile is 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. If you want to be able to su to it from a non-root account or login as 'postgres' you will need to set a password using passwd. UPGRADING AN INSTALLATION ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- For a minor-version upgrade (such as 9.1.1 to 9.1.2), just install the new RPMs; there's usually nothing more to it than that. Upgrading across a major release of PostgreSQL (for example, from 9.0.x to 9.1.x) requires more effort. If you are upgrading across more than one major release of PostgreSQL (for example, from 8.3.x to 9.0.x), you will need to follow the "traditional" dump and reload process to bring your data into the new version. That is: *before* upgrading, run pg_dumpall to extract all your data into a SQL file. Shut down the old postmaster, upgrade to the new version RPMs, initdb, and run the dump file through psql to restore your data. In some major releases, the RPMs also support in-place upgrade from the immediately previous major release. Currently, you can upgrade in-place from 9.0.x to 9.1.x. This is much faster than a dump and reload. To do an in-place upgrade: * shut down the old postmaster ("systemctl stop postgresql.service") * optionally make a backup of /var/lib/pgsql/data/ (recommended!) * install the new version's RPMs (install all the ones you had before, plus postgresql-upgrade) * as root, run "postgresql-setup upgrade" * update the configuration files /var/lib/pgsql/data/*.conf with any customizations you had before (your old configuration files are in /var/lib/pgsql/data-old/) * as root, run "systemctl start postgresql.service" * the postgresql-upgrade RPM can be removed after the update is complete, as can /var/lib/pgsql/data-old/ NOTE: The in-place upgrade process is new and relatively poorly tested, so if your data is critical it's a really good idea to make a tarball backup of /var/lib/pgsql/data/ before running the upgrade. This will let you get back to where you were in case of disaster. POSTGRESQL RPM PACKAGES AND RATIONALE. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- PostgreSQL is split up into multiple packages so that users can 'pick and choose' what pieces are needed, and what dependencies are required. The RPMset is packaged in the following subpackages: postgresql: Key client programs and documentation postgresql-libs: Client shared libraries postgresql-server: Server executables and data files postgresql-devel: Development libraries and include files postgresql-test: The regression tests and associated files postgresql-upgrade: Support files for upgrading from previous major version postgresql-docs: Extra documentation, such as the tutorial files postgresql-contrib: The contrib source tree, as well as selected binaries postgresql-plperl: PL/Perl procedural language postgresql-plpython: PL/Python procedural language postgresql-pltcl: PL/Tcl procedural language You have to install postgresql and postgresql-libs to do anything. postgresql-server is needed unless you only plan to use the clients to work with a remote PostgreSQL server. The others are optional. Note that there are no postgresql-perl, postgresql-jdbc, postgresql-odbc, postgresql-python, postgresql-tcl, or postgresql-tk subpackages any longer. Those programs have been split off into separate source distributions. They are still available, but in some cases not under those RPM names. RPM FILE LOCATIONS. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- To be in compliance with the Linux FHS, the PostgreSQL RPMs 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. However, the Red Hat / CentOS / Fedora RPM's install the files like this: Executables: /usr/bin Libraries: /usr/lib (or /usr/lib64) Documentation: /usr/share/doc/postgresql-docs-x.y.z/html Contrib documentation: /usr/share/doc/postgresql-contrib-x.y.z Source: not installed Data: /var/lib/pgsql/data Backup area: /var/lib/pgsql/backups Templates: /usr/share/pgsql Procedural Languages: /usr/lib/pgsql or /usr/lib64/pgsql Development Headers: /usr/include/pgsql Other shared data: /usr/share/pgsql Regression tests: /usr/lib/pgsql/test/regress (in the -test package) or /usr/lib64/pgsql/test/regress 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 RPMs are designed to be LSB-compliant -- if you find this not to be the case, please let us know by way of the pgsqlrpms-hackers@pgfoundry.org mailing list. MULTIPLE POSTMASTERS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The postgresql-server RPM contains a systemd "unit" file, postgresql.service, that is used to start the PostgreSQL postmaster. If you need to run multiple postmasters on one machine, you can create additional unit files derived from this one. As an example, let us create a secondary postmaster called, creatively enough, 'secondary'. Here are the steps: 1.) Create a file named /etc/systemd/system/secondary.service. (Note that user-created unit files must go into /etc not /lib!) Put these lines in it: .include /lib/systemd/system/postgresql.service [Service] Environment=PGPORT=nnnn Environment=PGDATA=/path/to/data/directory Replace "nnnn" and "/path/to/data/directory" with appropriate settings that don't conflict with any other postmaster. 2.) As root, do "/bin/systemctl daemon-reload" to ensure systemd has noticed your updates to the service file. 3.) Create the target PGDATA directory, making sure that its parent directories have appropriate ownership and permissions. 4.) Initdb the target PGDATA with 'postgresql-setup initdb secondary'. 5.) Edit postgresql.conf in the target PGDATA to change settings as needed. 6.) Start the new postmaster with 'systemctl start secondary.service'. You will probably also want to do 'systemctl enable secondary.service' so that the new postmaster is automatically started in future reboots. When doing a major-version upgrade of a secondary postmaster, mention the service name in the postgresql-setup command, for example 'postgresql-setup upgrade secondary'. This will let postgresql-setup find the correct data directory from the service file. If you are running SELinux in enforcing mode (which is highly recommended, particularly for network-exposed services like PostgreSQL) you will need to adjust SELinux policy to allow the postmaster to use non-default PGPORT or PGDATA settings. To allow use of a non-default port, say 5433, do this as root: semanage port -a -t postgresql_port_t -p tcp 5433 To allow use of a non-default data directory, say /special/pgdata, do: semanage fcontext -a -t postgresql_db_t "/special/pgdata(/.*)?" If you already created the directory, follow that with: restorecon -R /special/pgdata These settings are persistent across reboots. For more information see "man semanage". REGRESSION TESTING ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you install the postgresql-test RPM then you can run the PostgreSQL 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 the postmaster has been started (if not, su to root and do "systemctl start postgresql.service"), cd to /usr/lib/pgsql/test/regress (or /usr/lib64/pgsql/test/regress on a 64-bit machine), su to postgres, and execute "make check". This command will start the regression tests and will both show the results to the screen and store the results in the file regress.out. If any tests fail, see the file regression.diffs in that directory for details, and read the "Regression Tests" section of the PostgreSQL documentation to find out whether the differences are actually significant. If you need help interpreting the results, contact the pgsql-general list at postgresql.org. After testing, say "make clean" to remove the files generated by the test script. STARTING POSTMASTER AUTOMATICALLY AT SYSTEM STARTUP ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fedora / Red Hat / CentOS use the systemd package to manage server startup. A systemd unit file for PostgreSQL is provided in the server package, as /lib/systemd/system/postgresql.service. To start the postmaster manually, as root run systemctl start postgresql.service To shut the postmaster down, systemctl stop postgresql.service These two commands only change the postmaster's current status. If you want the postmaster to be started automatically during future system startups, run systemctl enable postgresql.service To undo that again, systemctl disable postgresql.service See "man systemctl" for other possible subcommands. GRAND UNIFIED CONFIGURATION (GUC) FILE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 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 a mostly-default file -- you will need to tune the parameters for your installation. In particular, you might want to allow nonlocal 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 'listen_addresses' -- you need to both uncomment the line and set the value to '*' to get the postmaster to accept nonlocal connections. You'll also need to adjust pg_hba.conf appropriately. LOGGING SET UP ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By default, the postmaster's stderr log is directed into files placed in a pg_log subdirectory of the data directory (ie, /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_log). The out-of-the-box configuration rotates among seven files, one for each day of the week. You can adjust this by changing postgresql.conf settings. REBUILDING FROM SOURCE RPM ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If your distribution is not supported by the binary RPMs 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 set up a non-root build environment (which is the recommended method anyway). Install the source RPM with rpm -i, then cd to the rpm building area (which 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 python 1 #build the postgresql-python package. tcl 1 #build the postgresql-tcl package. test 1 #build the postgresql-test package. plpython 1 #build the PL/Python procedural language package. pltcl 1 #build the PL/Tcl procedural language package. plperl 1 #build the PL/Perl procedural language package. ssl 1 #use OpenSSL support. kerberos 1 #use Kerberos 5 support. nls 1 #build with national language support. ldap 1 #build with LDAP support. pam 1 #build with PAM support. runselftest 1 #do "make check" during the build. sdt 1 #build with SystemTap support. xml 1 #build with XML support pgfts 1 #build with --enable-thread-safety uuid 1 #build contrib/uuid-ossp To use these defines, invoke a rebuild like this: rpmbuild --rebuild --define 'python 0' --define 'tcl 0' \ --define 'test 0' --define 'runselftest 0' --define 'kerberos 0' \ postgresql-9.1.2-1.src.rpm This line would disable the python, tcl, and test subpackages, disable the regression test run during build, and disable kerberos support. You might need to disable runselftest if there is an installed version of PostgreSQL that is a different major version from what you are trying to build. The self test tends to pick up the installed libpq.so shared library in place of the one being built :-(, so if that isn't compatible the test will fail. Also, you can't use runselftest when doing the build as root. More of these conditionals will be added in the future. CONTRIB FILES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The contents of the contrib tree are packaged into the -contrib subpackage and are processed with make and make install. There is documentation in /usr/share/doc/postgresql-contrib-VERSION for these modules. Most of the modules are in /usr/lib/pgsql (or /usr/lib64/pgsql) for loadable modules, and binaries are in /usr/bin. In the future these files may be split out, depending upon function and dependencies. MORE INFORMATION ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- You can get more information at http://www.postgresql.org and http://yum.pgsqlrpms.org Please help make this packaging better -- let us know if you find problems, or better ways of doing things. You can reach us by e-mail at pgsqlrpms-hackers@pgfoundry.org -------------------------------------------------------------------------------