Re: Manual installation of PostgreSQL 8

Quoting John DeSoi <desoi(at)pgedit(dot)com>:

On trying to install cygwin I realised that there was postmaster service left
over from installing cygwin postgres before.

I tried a few more times, and realised that the postgres user rights to the data
folder were not being set properly in cygwin. So I tried an initdb on a postgres
user folder, and that failed because of some /dev/null error related to recent
changes in cygwin.dll.

The only saving grace of the cygwin version was the fact that because the initdb
is written in shell language it was possible to see where the command that
failed was and fix it.

But alas the postmaster core dumped everytime I try to start.

I think what is more important for the pginstaller group is probably a
specification of the necessary conditions required for all the various steps of
the installation and configuration to succeed, the steps required and how they
can be implemented, and examples of how they can be implemented in various
scripting languages. I am sure that a general purpose language could have
spotted that the postmaster service existed and was configured differently and
warned me at that stage.

From them on people could implement their own installers in any general purpose
scripting language, whether WSH, bash, or even the DOS batch language, or even
install from the command prompt by hand.

I realised for instance that in the cygwin installation the xcacls program can
probably configure the /var/postgresql/data folder for the postgres user in a
short sequence of commands, if not just one.

I think the pginstaller group should reconsider the policy of installing the
service user under a separate account. It is understandable that the Unix world
does not believe in giving naive end users enough rope to hang themselves with,
but some of these issues can harm the advocacy of PostgreSQL in the Windows
world. It doesn't seem to have hurt MySQL or Firebird - at least make it an
option.

Anyway, real men use DOS, real men program in shell, and real men compile from
source. We also don't drink diet coke and decaf.

I am going to install from source.

PS. Is the a list of instructions I can use to install the raw precompiled
binaries

>
> On Jul 19, 2005, at 7:50 AM, frank church wrote:
>
> > I have tried the pginstaller a number of times on my system and it
> > always ends
> > in failure.
> >
> > I have seen a setup file on the pgfoundry site that allows manual
> > installation.
> >
> > Is there some documentation for it?
> >
> > I also sw some instructions for a silent installation - are they 2
> > options the
> > same?
> >
> > I have been able to install cygwin postgresql a number of times,
> > manually so I
> > am sure I will be able to do the manual installation.
> >
> > I just need to be able to get past the initdb failure
>
>
> If you install mingw, then you just compile and make like any other
> platform with the instructions provided in the main documentation. I
> never used cygwin, but I assume the process is the same.
>
>
>
> John DeSoi, Ph.D.
> http://pgedit.com/
> Power Tools for PostgreSQL
>
>

>
> On Jul 19, 2005, at 7:50 AM, frank church wrote:
>
> > I have tried the pginstaller a number of times on my system and it
> > always ends
> > in failure.
> >
> > I have seen a setup file on the pgfoundry site that allows manual
> > installation.
> >
> > Is there some documentation for it?
> >
> > I also sw some instructions for a silent installation - are they 2
> > options the
> > same?
> >
> > I have been able to install cygwin postgresql a number of times,
> > manually so I
> > am sure I will be able to do the manual installation.
> >
> > I just need to be able to get past the initdb failure
>
>
> If you install mingw, then you just compile and make like any other
> platform with the instructions provided in the main documentation. I
> never used cygwin, but I assume the process is the same.
>
>
>
> John DeSoi, Ph.D.
> http://pgedit.com/
> Power Tools for PostgreSQL
>
>

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