Re: Installing PG as a regular user?

> I'm not sure this is the best place to ask this question, but
> I tried .general, and the post was stalled and I think it
> never made it to the newsgroup.

Try the Admin list...it's fairly active.

> I'm wondering if it is possible to install the postgres server
> being a regular user (i.e., on a machine for which I don't have
> root access)

I think so...the postmaster daemon runs as an unpriviledged user (it won't
even run as root), so your only problem would be the actual installation
(copying the files to the right spot). The installation location is
configurable, so you could probably do something like:

./configure --prefix=/home/you/db --etc,etc

./configure --help will tell you all of the options supported by configure.

I'm not sure if the JDBC/ODBC/Perl DBI stuff is location-independent,
though.

> My first instinct would be to think that it is impossible; but
> my web hoster (who does not offer PostgreSQL), told me that if
> I could install it on my account and make it run without using
> too much of CPU time, then I could feel free to do it.

It's probably not a big deal as far as CPU time goes, but it will take some
disk space...

> So, the very fact that they suggest that got me thinking...
>
> Is it possible? If so, are there any documents that describe
> how to do it, or that give me hints and warnings about the
> potential problems?

Read the file called INSTALL in the source tarball. It doesn't say how to
do this, but it tells you about disk space, compiling, etc.

-- Jeremy [jeremy(at)wellsgaming(dot)com]