Re: New postgres installation

[Steve Crawford <scrawford@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

H. Hall wrote:
> Carol Walter wrote:
> > It been suggested that I download the binary and just go from there.  
> > All the documentation I've read says that for Unix installations 
> > should compile source.  Would using the binary allow me to do the 
> > customization my site requires.  I want to put the database in it's 
> > original location so that faculty won't have to change they're 
> > instructions to students.
> >
> > Carol
> I think that your main question is can you put PG in the directory of 
> your choice, if you compile.  The answer is yes.
What student/faculty documentation includes the data directory location? 
I can see that being important for system administration but user access 
will be using a client via a local or network port - actual location of 
the files won't make any difference. Same with administrative tools like 
pg_dumpall. If file location is irrelevant to your users, you are free 
to select your installation method regardless of that method's 
file-location defaults.

But you do need to be careful about accidentally having mixed versions 
of the client tools in different directories so that users could 
inadvertently use the old versions of psql, pg_dump, etc.

(I did say "accidentally". If everyone is clued in, you can have 
multiple versions of PG running on the same machine. If not, you will be 
answering questions due to the unexpected behavior.)

Cheers,
Steve