Installing Postgres 17 using source files
Dear readers,
In this document, I’ll show you how to install PG 17 using source files.
Various methods to install PG
1. YUM: From Linux machine run yum install and required PG packages will be downloaded from the
internet
2. RPM: Download required PG packages (.rpm) from internet to the Linux machine and then install those
packages via rpm
3. Source files: Download required PG source files from internet to the Linux machine, compile them and
then install.
Reasons to choose source files installation over other methods:
1. You want to use some customized PG options/settings e.g. Use different block size than default 8Kb or
want bigger WAL files than default 16 MB etc.
2. You want to develop a custom PG release of yours.
3. You found an are to improveme in PG and want to introduce that in PG
4. And many more
I have a CentOS 10 EC2 of t2.micro size (as it’s available for free and suits to our purpose), so let’s begin.
1. Installing the necessary packages:
a. gcc: To compile and execute PG core files
b. make: As PG is written in C language, it’s core files will be complied and executed using make
utility. Makefile is a special file that has entries of the files to be compiled and then run (resulting
into PG installation in our case).
c. zlib-devel: To support various PG compression algorithms
d. wget: To download PG files from the internet
e. libucu-devel: Development files for International Components for Unicode
f. bison: Needed for debugging PG parser grammer
g. flex: A tool for generating scanners (text pattern recognizers)
h. perl: Neede for OpenSSL configuration option
i. readline-devel: To provide history in psql (when we hit up arrow, we can see previous
commands we executed)
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# cat /etc/redhat-release
CentOS Stream release 10 (Coughlan)
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# yum install -y gcc readline-devel make zlib-devel openssl-devel
wget libicu-devel bison flex perl
2. Creating postgres user and directories for PGDATA, PG binaries
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# useradd -d /home/postgres -U postgres
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# echo postgres | passwd "postgres" --stdin
BAD PASSWORD: The password contains the user name in some form
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[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# mkdir -p /pgdata/17/main
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# chown -R postgres:postgres /pgdata
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# chmod -R 755 /pgdata
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# mkdir -p /home/postgres/bin/pgsql/17
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# chmod -R 755 /home/postgres/bin/pgsql/17
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# chown postgres: /home/postgres/bin/pgsql/17
3. Downloading and unzipping PG binaries
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]# cd /tmp
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 tmp]# wget https://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/source/v17.2/postgresql-
17.2.tar.gz
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 tmp]# ls -lh postgresql-17*
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 tmp]# gunzip postgresql-17.2.tar.gz
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 tmp]# tar -xpf postgresql-17.2.tar
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 tmp]# cd postgresql-17.2
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# ls -lh
4. We can see configure utility that’ll help us to install PG using various options. We can see various
options this utility provides using below command
[[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# ./configure --help
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5. Generating PG binaries (kind of a PG home where various utilities will reside e.g. psql, pg_dump)
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# ./configure --prefix=/home/postgres/bin/pgsql/17 --
with-openssl
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# make
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# make install
6. Generating an environment file/profile for postgres user
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# echo '
alias lt="ls -ltrh"
alias lta="ls -ltrha"
alias cl="clear"
alias lk="ps -ef | grep "
alias lki="ps -ef | grep "
export PGDATA=/pgdata/17/main
export PATH=/home/postgres/bin/pgsql/17/bin:$PATH
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/home/postgres/bin/pgsql/17/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
' >> /home/postgres/.bash_profile
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# chmod 755 /home/postgres/.bash_profile
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# chown postgres: /home/postgres/.bash_profile
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7. Initializing and starting the PG cluster via postgres user
[root@ip-172-31-31-68 postgresql-17.2]# sudo su - postgres
[postgres@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]$ which initdb
~/bin/pgsql/17/bin/initdb
[postgres@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]$ echo $PGDATA/
/pgdata/17/main/
[postgres@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]$ initdb -D $PGDATA –k
[postgres@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]$ pg_ctl -D $PGDATA/ start
8. Verification
[postgres@ip-172-31-31-68 ~]$ pg_ctl -D $PGDATA/ status
# from psql prompt
postgres=# select version();
postgres=# show data_checksums;
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