[HACKERS] Installation procedure.

You people are harsh.

BTW, I didn't modify the pg_hba.conf file at all since I want to allow
only local use, so ... um ... since I really haven't digested the usage of
the whole host configuration thing, I haven't the faintest clue whether
that would be the problem.

However, either way, I'd like to understand what happened and make sure
that the next hapless newbie doesn't spend as much time on it as I did.
Which, granted, wasn't that much time.

Here are a couple of surprises, then, that I encountered during this.

- initdb complained that it couldn't find a user. I gave it -u postgres.
- I needed to install flex (no surprise) -- the instructions are quite
explicit, but, well, wrong: flex depends on bison. So you have to get
and compile bison first. Also, the GNU FTP server has "redisorganized"
their file structure, so the very detailed FTP instructions for getting
flex are also outdated.
- Being only halfway a sysadmin, I was a little worried about making a
postgres "superuser". I just made a postgres user and didn't worry
about the super part, and it seems to work. Am I missing a point?
- The aforementioned shared memory problem was distressing. Thank God
somebody else had just encountered it. Is there any better way to
trap for that? Should the default number of backends be made something
less than 32 so that the "common setting" of 1 meg will be safe? Am I
being too wimpy?

That's pretty much it. Seems to be perking along happily now, but I
haven't run the regression tests yet.

On Sun, 1 Aug 1999, Thomas Lockhart wrote:

> > > Since this was my first time compiling/installing pgsql, I've noticed a
> > > couple of oopses (maybe mine) in the installation instructions... Who do
> > > I talk to to update them?
> > Send it to hackers or focs. Either is good. The -u may be because of
> > your pg_hba.conf file.
>
> If you have trouble finding the "focs" list, try "docs" instead ;)
>
> - Thomas
>
> --
> Thomas Lockhart lockhart(at)alumni(dot)caltech(dot)edu
> South Pasadena, California
>