Quick & Dirty Guide to PostgreSQL

Introduction

Watch out for issues when installing PG:

It runs as an "unprivileged" user in unix terms, and given the complex permissions model on Windows and the wide variety of setups on machines that's not always proved easy to get right.
If an AV is running on the server, tell the scanner that PG is a safe application. Better option: Don't install an AV on the server...

Create a directory where PostgreSQL data will live: mkdir -p /var/pgsql/data
Create a user account that will be used by PGSQL to run: useradd -c "PostgreSQL account" -d /var/pgsql/data postgres
Remove all unnecessary files copied by useradd: rm -f /var/pgsql/data *; rm -Rf /var/pgsql/data/* ; rm -Rf /var/pgsql/data/.*
Change ownership: chown -R postgres.postgres /var/pgsql
Install postgresql-7.0.3-8.i386.rpm, postgresql-7.0.3-8.i386.rpm, and postgresql-devel-7.0.3-8.i386.rpm
su - postgres
initdb -D /var/pgsql/data/
postmaster -D /var/pgsql/data/ < /dev/null >> /var/pgsql/data/server.log 2>&1 &
Add a startup script in /etc/rc.d/init.d/ so that PostgreSQL starts automatically
Create a dummy database, and log to psql: createdb testdb ; psql testdb; (\q to exit)

create user jdoe with password 'secret';

alter user jdoe with password 'admirer';

insert into pg_group (groname, grosysid, grolist) values ('posthackers', '1234', '{5443, 8261}'); grant insert on foo to group posthackers;

drop user jdoe;

(from the OS shell) createdb testdb;

(within PostgreSQL) create database testdb;

(from the OS shell) dropdb testdb (within a PostgreSQL session) drop database testdt;