Re: [GENERAL] Installation simplicity - Mailing list pgsql-general

RTFM :)  Most of the installation issues you bring up below are in the
install.txt file.  It's a pretty foolproof document (type this, if you see
this, do that, else do this...)  The only problem is that it is long, which
may seem a bit daunting to newbies.  Maybe a INSTALL-QUICK.TXT file that
just has the important 13 steps, and a note at the top that you can get
precompiled packages for the different distributions at a given URL?

At 11:56 PM 10/18/99, Lincoln Yeoh wrote:
[snip]
>Things people would probably like to know:
>0) You need to know what to do next.
>1) You have to know that you have to do initdb first, and who does it, and
>what happens after that. Same for createdb.
>2) Know how to set it to run everytime the system boots up...
>3) How do you stop/restart it? When do you need to do that?
>4) How to get to that SQL stuff? Ah Psql, not postsql :).
>5) What's with the createdb as compared to CREATE DATABASE via psql. You
>don't know that createdb is just a script which calls psql- it could be
>some magical thing that you MUST run if not bad things happen later :).
>6) What can you change? And what do you do if you change it? (relinking?
>recompiling? restart?).
>
>And if you suddenly want to turn on access controls - passwords for users
>and stuff, the admin approach changes completely! You CANNOT use the
>scripts (remember, you didn't know they were just scripts) you must shift
>to psql, and the webdocs aren't as clear on that. Createdb? Now different.
>Add user? Also different.
>
>You need to know similar things for other systems. But for some reason many
>users don't find these things as obvious when installing postgres for the
>first time.
>
>However all in all Postgres ain't that bad (a few other commercial database
>engines spring to mind). Still I hope we aren't aiming that way ;).
>
>For rule 0, sticking a basic HowTo with the source may help.
>
>All this is not unexpected though: practically ALL databases engines are
>different. What to run as backend/daemon, how to run, how to stop it from
>running, what to run to admin it. Dates, times (how to set a field's date
>and time to "now"), currency, numbers, indexes, counter vs serial vs auto
>increment vs sequences+insert triggers. They're all different. And the
>thing is all these details are rather important for practically any decent
>database app!
>
>Many times after we figure stuff out, we no longer understand why it was so
>hard in the first place. This is a problem when writing docs for newbies..
>
>Cheerio,
>
>Link.
>
>[1]
>Is it just me, or is installing Oracle based on the Oracle installation
>manual like doing surgery following an academic textbook? e.g. chapter 1
>has 100 ways to do an incision. Chapter 2 has 20 ways on sewing up. Chapter
>3 discusses anaesthesia. Chapter 4- tying blood vessels, (by the way please
>refer to chapter 2 for more sewing hints)..
>Also see Appendix A: Ways to hold scalpels. Appendix B: Washing.
>And so on. In the end one has to go to the web and look for a HOWTO :).
>
>
>
>
>************
>