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Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for PostgreSQL V6.5

Sun Solaris Specific

TO BE READ IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE NORMAL FAQ

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last updated: Thu Sep 2 11:40:00 CET 1999

current maintainer: Marc Liyanage (liyanage@access.ch)

original author: Marc Liyanage (liyanage@access.ch)

Contents:

1.1) What tools do I need to build and install PostgreSQL on Solaris?

1.2) What else do I have to do before building PostgreSQL?

1.3) Why am I getting "IpcMemoryCreate" errors when I try

to run postmaster?

1.4) Why am I getting "Can't tell what username to use" errors

when I try to run initdb?

Notes:

- The commands given here are for the bash shell. If you use

a different shell, you'll have to change the commands accordingly,

especially these regarding environment variables.

- These instructions are written for Solaris 2.6

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Section 1: Building and Installing PostgreSQL

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1.1) What tools do I need to build and install PostgreSQL on Solaris?

You will need

- GNU flex 2.5.4 or better (the lex included in Solaris 2.6 won't work)

- GNU bison (the yacc included in Solaris 2.6 won't work)

- GNU zip (gzip and especially zcat for installing the docs)

- GNU make

- GNU readline library

We also used

- GNU cc (gcc 2.8.1)

If you like Solaris packages, you can find these tools here:

http://www.sunfreeware.com

If you prefer sources, look here:

http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html

1.2) What else do I have to do before building PostgreSQL?

Shared libraries

----------------

The default installation procedure puts the shared libraries

into "/usr/local/pgsql/lib", but the dynamic loader won't

find them there at runtime unless you use some hack like

symlinking the libraries in /usr/lib or setting LD_LIBRARY_PATH

for every user that will use the DB system.

The first time you'll encounter this problem is usually when

running "initdb". It will fail with something like

ld.so.1: pg_id: fatal: libpq.so: open failed: No such file or directory

We recommend that you store the path of the directory containing

the libraries in the environment variable LD_RUN_PATH *before*

starting the build. This will cause the linker to store this

path in the binaries.

Do this:

# export LD_RUN_PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/lib

(or wherever you choose to put the libraries)

There is some good information about this here:

http://www.visi.com/~barr/ldpath.html

zcat

----

If

- both the original solaris zcat as well as the recommended

GNU zcat are installed on the system (e.g. the former in /usr/bin and

the latter in /usr/local/bin) and

- configure (or "which zcat") finds the wrong one

then configure needs to be told where GNU zcat can be found.

Failure to do so will cause configure to select the wrong one

and the "gmake install" command in the "doc" subdirectory

(step 12 in the INSTALL file) will fail because Solaris

zcat cannot handle the .gz compressed documentation files.

To fix this, type

# export GZCAT=/usr/local/bin/zcat

(or wherever your GNU zcat lives)

before running configure.

1.3) Why am I getting "IpcMemoryCreate" errors when I try

to run the postmaster?

(See also 3.4 in the main FAQ file)

Under Solaris 2.6 and probably others, the default shared memory

maximum segment size kernel parameter is set too low. The solution

is to put something like the following line into /etc/system and

reboot the system.

set shmsys:shminfo_shmmax=0xffffffff

Excellent info regarding shared memory under Solaris can be found here:

http://www.sunworld.com/swol-09-1997/swol-09-insidesolaris.html

1.4) Why am I getting "Can't tell what username to use" errors

when I try to run initdb?

Put something like this into the .bash_profile startup script

of the postgres user (see also step 17 in the INSTALL file):

export USER=postgres