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

On Tue, Apr 28, 2009 at 6:00 PM, DM <dm(dot)aeqa(at)gmail(dot)com> 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.

If you need > 1 version at the same time on the same machine with
rpms, then source code is preferred. If you're running a debian or
debian derived OS (ubuntu etc) then you CAN have > 1 version, but only
major versions. i.e. 8.2.11 and 8.3.7, but not 8.3.3 and 8.3.7. But
there's not usually a great need for > 1 minor version so no great
loss.

On in house testing servers it can be handy to have multiple minor
versions for testing, and in that case installing from source is
preferred. For big production machines, you should already have a
plan in place for upgrading so that you usually don't need multiple
minor or even major versions there.

Performance wise there's no real difference.