Re: Getting Started

Adam I. Harris, M.D. wrote:

> I have an XServe running Mac OS 10.3.

Ooops ... exotic ;)

> The dual G4 machine has 2 Gig RAM and 750 GIG hard drive.

That's decent.
Ummm ... I doubt that the default config of PostgreSQL will use that
much memory even if it should.
As soon as your PG works you should find out how to tweak the memory
settings. Probaply you'll need to compile it yourself.

> I'm using a PACS program that depends on Postgresql to run my image
> database. For the life of me, I cannot get postgresql to install and
> run properly. I get errors in the log that access to certain files is
> denied on the basis of permissions, while I cannot find the files in
> question to grant access (yes, I do know how to look for invisible
> files).

Is it the PostgreSQL log or OS X's ?
What are the inaccessible files names ?

Generally one creates a special user for running the PostgreSQL server
process who is called "postgres" ... or whatever you like.
It must be a nonadministrative user.
This user "postgres" should own the data directory and probaply only he
should have access to it.
So if you created "/var/postgres/data" as user "adam" then run
PostgreSQL as user "postgres" the server might be not allowed to go into
the data directory at all therefore it can't acces stuff it expects to
find there. Or maybe it can read there but has no write-permission.

Did you run "initdb" with the user "postgres" to prepare the content of
the data dir. before you tried to start the server the first time ?
Under Windows you actually need to logon as this user. It won't do to
just to use "run as" while beeing loged in as someone else.

Mind that the server won't start, if it figures it was allready running.
Look for stale process-id files e.g. "/tmp/postmaster.pid". Those access
right issues are pretty annoying. I had my fair share of them.

If you switched the starting user ("adam" --> "postgres") an write
permission issue might arise with PostgreSQL's log file.
Delete it so PostgreSQL can create a new one.

> I really could use some assistance getting the system started. I also
> will need a clickable icons and two programs to start and stop the db
> with auto start on reboot.

Those 2 programs are actually 1 and it comes with postgres.
Look in the readme. It should be pg_ctl or as in Linux and Windows
there might be ways to install PostgreSQL as a OS service. Services get
automatically started/stopped by the OS.

If you ran the initdb command succesfully it displayed 2 ways to
start the server manually. You can use both as command parameters of an
icon. Though those commands need to be run by the server process owner.
That's "postgres". OS X should have some "su -c 'blabla'" way to do this.
I use :
/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -i -D /usr/local/pgsql/data >logfile 2>&1 &

To stop postgres you can simply kill it with the process id in it's
pid-file:
kill -INT `sed -n 1p /usr/local/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid`
or use some magic with pg_ctl.

> I've been trying to install 7.4.3. Is version 8 ready for prime time?

What about the current stable 7.4.5 ?

hope it helped
Andreas