Dirk.Net

Update: It’s much (easier and safer) to install a now stable backport package for PostgreSQL-8.3. To learn more about backports, visit this page and enable the backport repository for your Linux distribution. You can then install via the package manager or apt-get.

The latest version of PostgreSQL can’t yet be installed on Ubuntu (Linux Mint) via apt-get install of a mature Debian package, so the process is a little more involved and somewhat challenging for a Linux newbie such as I. Here are some hints:
The article 10 Steps to Installing PostgreSQL is very helpful and mandatory if you’re not that familiar with installing packages manually on Linux. Then this forum post has some additional hints and is geared towards 8.3.
So here are my ten steps:

1. Do a
   sudo apt-get install build-essential
   which really is essential for installing source packages.
2. Download libxml sources which you have to install as the installation on Gutsy Gibbon is faulty (see the “forum post” quoted above for details), so from your download dir
   sudo mv libxml2-sources-2.6.31.tar.gz /usr/local/src
   cd /usr/local/src
   sudo tar -xzvf libxml2-sources-2.6.31.tar.gz
   cd libxml2-2.6.31
   ./configure
   make
   sudo make install
3. Download a postgresql-8.3.0.tar.gz from a mirror listed here.
4. Then from your download directory
   sudo mv postgresql-8.3.0.tar.gz /usr/local/src
   cd /usr/local/src
   sudo tar -xzvf postgresql-8.3.0.tar.gz
   For an explanation see the “10 Steps” article.
5. Configure and install PostgreSQL:
   cd /usr/local/src/postgres-8.3.0
   ./configure –with-libxml –without-readline –without-zlib –with-libraries=/usr/local/lib
   make
   sudo make install
   Hopefully you’ll get a “PostgreSQL installation complete.”
6. Do user related stuff:
   #create the postgres user
   sudo adduser postgres
   sudo mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
   sudo chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
   
7. Change to the postgres user and continue
   #change to the postgres user
   sudo su - postgres
8. The rest is verbatim from the forum post:
   #initialize the data directory
   /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
   cd /usr/local/pgsql/data

   #create the log dir
   mkdir log

   #sample to start the server
   /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data >/usr/local/pgsql/data/log/logfile 2>&1 &

   #create a sample database
   /usr/local/pgsql/bin/createdb mysampledb

   #now test it
   /usr/local/pgsql/bin/psql mysampledb
   
   You’re all set and the database server should be running.

9. You might wanna create a new password for the postgres user:
   sudo passwd postgres
10. Then you can connect with pgAdmin III
    File > Add Server
    address: localhost
    Description: my beautiful server or whatever
    Password: do you remember?
    Click OK

     

11. OK, these go to 11:

    To start the server automatically at every boot, simply add:
    su -c ‘/usr/local/pgsql/bin/pg_ctl start -l /usr/local/pgsql/data/log/logfile -D /usr/local/pgsql/data’ postgres
    to your /etc/rc.local file. More info is here.

    Hope it helps.