Trouble starting postgres with postgis on Centos 5

Question

I want to use postgresql with postgis on a Centos5 64-bit machine.

I started by using the following commands as root:

> yum install postgresql

> yum install postgresql-server

> yum install postgresql-contrib

They seemed to succeed, but the service wouldn't start with 'service postgresql start'. I tried to find out if it was a version problem, like I needed to say 'service postgresql-8.4 start' or something, instead (which I had run into a a different Linux OS.) To determine which postgres was installed:

> yum list postgres* 

and there were some postgres items that said 8.1 in the version column.

Then I read somewhere that I needed 8.2 or higher for postgis to work so I tried to uninstall the 8.1 version with the following commands:

> rpm -e postgresql-server 
> rpm -e postgresql-contrib
> rpm -e postgresql

I didn't get any errors, so I figured it worked.

Then I installed the 8.4 version of postgis hosted at postgresql following the instructions on this page http://postgis.net/install/ but avoiding the part about changing the yum repository file (step 2) because it seemed that in my case, I did not want to exclude postgres* from being updated.

So I first did wget

> wget http://yum.postgresql.org/9.1/redhat/rhel-5-x86_64/pgdg-centos91-9.1-4.noarch.rpm

(Ignore steps 2 and 3 as well since I'd already rpm'ed postgresql-server) Next, I did

> yum install postgis21

Since postgis2 (as suggested in the instructions) was not available. I also installed the 84 server.

> yum install postgresql84-server

Now it seems like I have both 8.1 and 8.4 pieces installed.

> yum list posgres*

Installed Packages
postgresql-libs.i386                     8.1.23-6.el5_8                installed
postgresql-libs.x86_64                   8.1.23-6.el5_8                installed
postgresql84.x86_64                      8.4.13-1.el5_8                installed
postgresql84-libs.x86_64                 8.4.13-1.el5_8                installed
postgresql84-server.x86_64               8.4.13-1.el5_8                installed
postgresql92-libs.x86_64                 9.2.0-og1                     installed
Available Packages
postgresql.x86_64                        8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-contrib.x86_64                8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-devel.i386                    8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-devel.x86_64                  8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-docs.x86_64                   8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-jdbc.x86_64                   8.1.407-1jpp.4                base     
postgresql-odbc.x86_64                   08.01.0200-3.1                base     
postgresql-odbc64.x86_64                 09.00.0200-1.el5              base     
postgresql-pl.x86_64                     8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-python.x86_64                 8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-server.x86_64                 8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-tcl.x86_64                    8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql-test.x86_64                   8.1.23-6.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-contrib.x86_64              8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-devel.i386                  8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-devel.x86_64                8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-docs.x86_64                 8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-libs.i386                   8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-plperl.x86_64               8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-plpython.x86_64             8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-pltcl.x86_64                8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-python.x86_64               8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-tcl.x86_64                  8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql84-test.x86_64                 8.4.13-1.el5_8                base     
postgresql92.x86_64                      9.2.0-og1                     opengeo  
postgresql92-contrib.x86_64              9.2.0-og1                     opengeo  
postgresql92-devel.x86_64                9.2.0-og1                     opengeo  
postgresql92-docs.x86_64                 9.2.0-og1                     opengeo  
postgresql92-plperl.x86_64               9.2.0-og1                     opengeo  
postgresql92-plpython.x86_64             9.2.0-og1                     opengeo  
postgresql92-pltcl.x86_64                9.2.0-og1                     opengeo  
postgresql92-server.x86_64               9.2.0-og1                     opengeo

And I'm stuck in the cycle shown here:

> service postgresql start

/var/lib/pgsql/data is missing. Use "service postgresql initdb" to initialize
 the cluster first.  [FAILED]

> service postgresql initdb

Initializing database: mkdir: cannot create directory `/var/lib/pgsql/data/pg
_log': File exists

> rm -rf /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_log

(Okay it removes it)

> service postgresql initdb

The responses says 'Initializing database:" with nothing behind the colon.

> service postgresql start

/var/lib/pgsql/data is missing. Use "service postgresql initdb" to initialize
 the cluster first.  [FAILED]

> service postgresql initdb

Initializing database: mkdir: cannot create directory `/var/lib/pgsql/data/pg
_log': File exists

And so forth...

Could having these different versions on there be the problem? Any other ideas?

Thanks.

Answer 1

When you install RedHat provided (via centos) postgresql, it expects to have ownership over the base /var/lib/pgsql/data folder as RHEL does not expect you to install updated major releases of postgresql. The PGDBG provided rpms allow multiple versions to exist and install data into /var/lib/psql/VERSION/data, where version changes based on what you have installed.

If you wish to stick with RHEL supplied postgresql, you probably need to blow away the entire /var/lib/pgsql/data directory first and then try initdb. Of course, don't do this if you have existing database data!

I'd suggest you try the 9.3 release of postgresql via PGDBG.