Thread: Installing PostgreSQL on OSX Server
Hello! I have convinced a client to use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL (hooray), which means it falls on me to install and configure it. I'm planning on doing this from the command line (I have SSH access). I have installed and configured PostgreSQL on Windows, FreeBSD, and a few Linux flavors, but never OSX. I have the basic directions (http://www.enterprisedb.com/resources-community/pginst-guide) and found a couple of articles / blogs, but really I'm not an Apple guy so I don't want to miss anything or screw anything up. Is there anything I should watch out for? I have some wiggle room (this is a development server at first), but I'd rather not break anything. uname -a returns: Darwin xxx.local 10.8.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.8.0: Tue Jun 7 16:33:36 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1504.15.3~1/RELEASE_I386 i386 PostgreSQL version: Latest and greatest - 9.2.2 Thanks! -- Stephen
On Jan 28, 2013, at 6:45 AM, Stephen Cook <sclists@gmail.com> wrote: > Hello! > > I have convinced a client to use PostgreSQL instead of MySQL (hooray), which means it falls on me to install and configureit. I'm planning on doing this from the command line (I have SSH access). > > I have installed and configured PostgreSQL on Windows, FreeBSD, and a few Linux flavors, but never OSX. I have the basicdirections (http://www.enterprisedb.com/resources-community/pginst-guide) and found a couple of articles / blogs, butreally I'm not an Apple guy so I don't want to miss anything or screw anything up. > > Is there anything I should watch out for? I have some wiggle room (this is a development server at first), but I'd rathernot break anything. > > uname -a returns: Darwin xxx.local 10.8.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.8.0: Tue Jun 7 16:33:36 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1504.15.3~1/RELEASE_I386i386 > PostgreSQL version: Latest and greatest - 9.2.2 > > Thanks! You're not planning on using this in production, I hope? OS X is a very solid desktop OS, but it's server variant is packedfull of weird and plain broken behaviour. OS X includes the postgresql clients and libraries, and OS X Server includes the postgresql server. You don't want to usethe included postgresql server, or the included libpq and binaries, but you'll want to make sure that they don't clashwith the version you're installing - for the server that's not too painful, but for the clients you'll want to makesure that the PATH of all users is set up to find your installed versions of psql etc. before the ones in /usr/bin, andthat they're linking with the right libpq.dylib, not the one in /usr/lib. "otool -L" is the OS X equivalent to ldd. OS X doesn't have readline installed, it has libedit. Libedit is poor compared to readline, and the OS X installed versionof libedit was, for years, hideously broken such that tab completion would cause SEGVs. It might have been fixed inthe latest releases, or it might not. It's worth avoiding anyway. If you'll be installing using the point-and-click enterprisedb installer it should take care of some of the issues for you.If you end up installing from source you need to be aware that OS X is a dual-architecture system with fat binaries andlibraries (for i386 and x86_64 on recent releases). Depending on what your developers are doing that may be an issue.The usual way of building fat binaries doesn't work for postgresql, or didn't the last time I tried it; you may needto build twice, once for each architecture, then glue the results together to make fat libraries. Also, on a non-postgreql note, you'll find that the OS X userspace, particularly when it comes to system administration tools,is strange and scary compared to the unixalikes you've used. You create users with multiple dscl commands, not adduser.Daemons are managed by launchd, not started from /etc/init.d. http://labs.wordtothewise.com/postgresql-osx/ has a few notes on building and installing from source that might be useful. Recent versions of OS X server (10.6 and later, I think) can be installed in VMWare, as long as the host is running on Applehardware (so either VMWare Fusion or ESXi running on a mini) if you want to build a play / staging environment whereyou can roll back snapshots. Cheers, Steve
Steve Atkins <steve@blighty.com> writes:
> OS X doesn't have readline installed, it has libedit. Libedit is poor compared to readline, and the OS X installed
versionof libedit was, for years, hideously broken such that tab completion would cause SEGVs. It might have been fixed
inthe latest releases, or it might not. It's worth avoiding anyway.
I don't necessarily agree with Steve's other gripes about OSX, but I've
got to support this one. libedit has been badly, and differently,
broken in each of the past several major releases of OSX (there are some
details in our archives). It's brutally obvious that Apple doesn't test
it much, nor do they bother to fix it in minor releases. Get GNU
readline and build psql with that, if you're going to be using psql at
all heavily. And note that /usr/lib/libreadline.dylib is not GNU
readline, it's an alias for libedit.
regards, tom lane
On 1/28/2013 11:15 AM, Steve Atkins wrote: > You're not planning on using this in production, I hope? OS X is a very solid desktop OS, but it's server variant is packedfull of weird and plain broken behaviour. > Ouch. These are the servers they have and use, I don't really get a say in that. Are these problems PostgreSQL-specific? They are already running Apache with PHP and MySQL on these, so if it is a general "broken-ness" I guess they are already used to it? -- Stephen
On Jan 28, 2013, at 8:47 AM, Stephen Cook <sclists@gmail.com> wrote: > On 1/28/2013 11:15 AM, Steve Atkins wrote: >> You're not planning on using this in production, I hope? OS X is a very solid desktop OS, but it's server variant is packedfull of weird and plain broken behaviour. >> > > Ouch. These are the servers they have and use, I don't really get a say in that. > > Are these problems PostgreSQL-specific? They are already running Apache with PHP and MySQL on these, so if it is a general"broken-ness" I guess they are already used to it? Not postgresql specific at all, just a lot of very flaky user-space code (and it's really just regular desktop OS X withmore applications added, not really a differently tuned system). You're also going to find that it's really poorly suitedfor remote management via ssh, and the remote management apps have ridiculous OS version requirements for the managementconsole. Plan on setting up VNC or using screen sharing (which is available on OS X client, /System/Library/CoreServices/ScreenSharing.app, or something like that). If they're already using them in production with apache/php, nothing they're doing should break when they switch to postgresql. Cheers, Steve
> I have installed and configured PostgreSQL on Windows, FreeBSD, and a > few Linux flavors, but never OSX. I have the basic directions > (http://www.enterprisedb.com/resources-community/pginst-guide) and > found a couple of articles / blogs, but really I'm not an Apple guy > so I don't want to miss anything or screw anything up. > > Is there anything I should watch out for? I have some wiggle room > (this is a development server at first), but I'd rather not break > anything. I would stay away from MacPorts. The last time I have been working with PostgreSQL on MacOS X, I used the installer from http://www.postgresqlformac.com/ There's also a different approach, that I've never tried: http://postgresapp.com/ Sincerely, Wolfgang
Le 2013-01-28 à 14:47, Wolfgang Keller a écrit : >> I have installed and configured PostgreSQL on Windows, FreeBSD, and a >> few Linux flavors, but never OSX. I have the basic directions >> (http://www.enterprisedb.com/resources-community/pginst-guide) and >> found a couple of articles / blogs, but really I'm not an Apple guy >> so I don't want to miss anything or screw anything up. >> >> Is there anything I should watch out for? I have some wiggle room >> (this is a development server at first), but I'd rather not break >> anything. > > I would stay away from MacPorts. > > The last time I have been working with PostgreSQL on MacOS X, I used > the installer from > > http://www.postgresqlformac.com/ > > There's also a different approach, that I've never tried: > > http://postgresapp.com/ If you don't know about Homebrew, you should definitely look into it: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew That's what I use for development, and it works great. Bye, François
On 1/28/13 1:05 PM, François Beausoleil wrote: > >> >> I would stay away from MacPorts. Gotta agree on that one. >> >> The last time I have been working with PostgreSQL on MacOS X, I used >> the installer from >> >> http://www.postgresqlformac.com/ >> >> There's also a different approach, that I've never tried: >> >> http://postgresapp.com/ > > If you don't know about Homebrew, you should definitely look into it: https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew I'll second that too. If you have problems with readline compilation error ( chances are good that you will ), A homebrew replacement for the crappy OS X libraries might go along the lines of.. sudo git clone git://github.com/mxcl/homebrew.git /usr/local/homebrew cd /usr/local/bin ln -s /usr/local/homebrew/bin/brew brew sudo mkdir /usr/local/homebrew/Cellar chmod a+w /usr/local/homebrew/Cellar brew install readline brew link --overwrite --dry-run readline sudo brew link --overwrite readline