Re: Best way to install postgres? RPM/Source Code Build

[John R Pierce <pierce(at)hogranch(dot)com>]

DM wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> What is the best way to Install postgres database?
>
> We have installed (2) versions of the postgres on th server using 
> source code (compiling and building) (/usr/local/pgsql/8.3.3/ and 
> /usr/local/pgsql/8.3.6/) and our data directory is (/mnt/data/pgsql/)
> Our database size is more than 100GB. Currently we are running 8.3.6. 
> When we upgraded from 8.3.3 to 8.3.6, we pointed the data directory of 
> 8.3.3 to 8.3.6.
>
> Ops team want to install postgres as (usr/local/bin) using RPM, and 
> want to keep the data directory under (/var/lib/data/pgsql) and they 
> say that we cannot have two versions at the same time using RPM.
> They say that red hat standard is to install all binaries of the 
> database under /usr/local/bin and by using RPM only.
>
> What is the best way to install postgres? Is it by RPM or using Source 
> code (Build). Could postgres experts comment on this please.

actually, the redhat RPM standard is to intsall the binaries in /usr/bin 
and libraries in /usr/lib and so forth, and the postgres data is in 
/var/lib/pgsql/data   ....

however, if you build your own RPMs, you can build it any way you 
want.    upgrading 8.3.x to 8.3.y generally does NOT require any sort of 
dump/restore, just stop the server, upgrade the binaries, restart the 
server and move on.

I for one use the PGDG yum rpm repository, and install the 8.3 on top of 
the default rhel/centos 4 or 5 binaries.   the repository includes a 
compatibility library which satisfies RPM dependencies on the original 
RHEL versions of the libpq.so ...