A good place to start is an article on Apple’s developers site…. Postgres on Mac OS X

However I’ll be using DarwinPorts (or MacPorts as its now known) instead of fink. In fact you may ask why don’t I just install the Darwin port of Postgres? When it comes to critical apps which are important to me I always prefer to use the source and therefore can apply any compilation settings that I may need.

Here’s the steps I went thru (via Terminal session). DarwinPorts being installed is a prerequisite….

First off u must become root. You can do this from an admin account with just “sudo -s“.

Next we must install some ports that Postgres will need….

    port install readline
    port install gmake
    port install bison


Then we need to create a /usr/local directory (mkdir /usr/local). Within this we need a “src” directory where we can download the Postgres source code to (cd /usr/local ; mkdir src ; cd src).

Download the latest stable PostgreSQL source from www.postgresql.org and unpack it…. gzcat postgres-source.tar.gz | tar xvf -

Now you in a position to compile the source code. Go into the Postgres directory that was unpacked and do the following steps….

    ./configure --with-includes=/opt/local/include/ --with-libraries=/opt/local/lib --with-bonjour
    gmake
    gmake install


PostgreSQL as now been compiled and installed. Next step is to initiate the database storage area. For this you will need to create a “postgres” account on your Mac. (If unclear then read instructions in the article on how to do this). Then do this…..

    mkdir /usr/local/pgsql/data
    chown postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
    su -l postgres
    /usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data


We now have a fully working PostgreSQL RDBMS on your Mac.

Next you want to put the following in your login .profile (for the postgres account)….


    export PGDATA=/usr/local/pgsql/data
    export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/pgsql/bin


If you now source this profile with you now have the Postgres commands in your $PATH ( . .profile ).

To start the Postgres DB server (postmaster) in the background….


    pg_ctl -l logfile start


and to stop it…..


    pg_ctl stop


You can now go ahead and create a database in PostgreSQL.

That’s it for now but will touch on security & auto launching at later date.

Well if u…..

1. insert the first install disc
2. scroll down to u see the “Optional Installs” PKG icon & double click on it
3. Follow through options (answering the obvious!) till u get to “Installation Type”
4. Click on “Applications” in the Package window

And u should see this…..

Just check on X11 and install

Now all I do now is “ssh -Y username@server” and I can open an X-window app on the server (on Panther you needed “ssh -X username@server”).

However I prefer to work in iTerm and not the xterm app that came with X11. For this to work you need to set the DISPLAY variable correctly. I groked this from http://xanana.ucsc.edu/xtal/sample.bashrc

# Set the DISPLAY variable -- works for Apple X11 with Fast User Switching

if [[ -z $DISPLAY && -z $SSH_CONNECTION ]]; then
    disp_no=($( ps -awx | grep -F X11.app | awk '{print $NF}' 
                     | grep -e ":[0-9]"  ))
    if [[ -n $disp_no ]];then
        export DISPLAY=${disp_no}.0
    else
        export DISPLAY=:0.0
    fi
    echo "DISPLAY has been set to $DISPLAY"
fi

There r ways of getting X11 up headless from iTerm… but my usage of X11 is just occasional so I’ll leave that to another day.