Thread: Installing PG as a regular user?
Hi, 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. 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) 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. 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? Thanks! Carlos --
Carlos Moreno <moreno@mochima.com> writes:
> I'm not sure this is the best place to ask this question,
It's not; pgsql-admin would be better (and I think this very question
was asked there yesterday).
> 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)
The only thing you need or want root access for is to add postgres
to the system startup scripts. Without that, you'll need to manually
re-launch the postgres server any time the system is rebooted.
There was some discussion of faking it with a cron job that's set to
run every few minutes: look to see if postmaster is running, start it
if not. If you have cron privileges then this might be a good enough
answer, ugly though it be.
See the other thread for more detail.
regards, tom lane
> 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@wellsgaming.com]
Quoting Jeremy Buchmann <jeremy@wellsgaming.com>: > > > 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. JDBC & ODBC shouldnt as they are just clients (ie: don't know where the database is installed bar from the ip/host name & port). Peter -- Peter Mount peter@retep.org.uk PostgreSQL JDBC Driver: http://www.retep.org.uk/postgres/ RetepPDF PDF library for Java: http://www.retep.org.uk/pdf/