Re: [HACKERS] New install doc

On 2000-01-20, Vince Vielhaber mentioned:

> 
>  2. If you are not upgrading an existing system then skip to .
> 
> skip to 4.
> 
> 
>  6. Install the program. Type
> 
>      $ gmake install
> 
> The installer needs to have write access to the install directory.

Presumably the installer would only try to install to a directory that he
has access to. With the new installation instructions you will end up
installing the program files as root, which is a) the normal thing to do,
b) less confusing, and c) more secure, since an astray trigger function
can't fry your installation proper. You can of course install it under
whatever user you want, but then you ought to be experienced enough to
figure it out yourself.

I remember my first installation and the juggling with su in and su out
and, darn, now I installed this as the wrong user, chown -R, etc. only to
find out that this was completely unnecessary. Consider Apache (my
rolemodel :), you don't install that as 'nobody' either.


>   8. Create the database installation. To do this you must log in to your
>      PostgreSQL superuser account. It will not work as root.
> 
>      $ mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
>      $ chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
> 
> I thought the data directory was created either in the gmake install step
> or initdb.   Either way the chown might be better as:

No, it never was. Not sure if initdb used to create the data directory
itself, at least now it does try to do so if it doesn't exist. But if you
are going to put your data into a root-owned dir (such as
/usr/local/pgsql/data) you must create it first and change the ownership.

> # chown -R postgres:postgres /usr/local/pgsql
> 
> that should be the same on most systems with perhaps the exception of the
> colon.  Anyway it'll make sure that all the files have the correct owners.

No. See above.

> 
> 
> 9. The previous step should have told you how to start up the database
>      server. Do so now.
> 
>      $ /usr/local/pgsql/initdb/postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
> 
> Shouldn't that be /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster ??

Oops.


-- 
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115
peter_e@gmx.net                   75262 Uppsala
http://yi.org/peter-e/            Sweden