PostgreSQL can be installed using RPMs (binary) or SRPMs (source) managed by YUM. This is available for the following Linux distributions (both 32- and 64-bit platforms; for the current release and prior release or two):

• Fedora
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• CentOS
• Scientific Linux
• Oracle Enterprise Linux

See links from the main repository, http://yum.postgresql.org:

• A list of available packages
• Repository packages for different version combinations
• Status of RPM builds

Instructions

Configure your YUM repository

Locate and edit your distributions .repo file, located:

• On Fedora: /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo, [fedora] sections
• On CentOS: /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo, [base] and [updates] sections
• On Red Hat: /etc/yum/pluginconf.d/rhnplugin.conf [main] section

To the section(s) identified above, you need to append a line (otherwise dependencies might resolve to the postgresql supplied by the base repository):

exclude=postgresql*

Install PGDG RPM file

A PGDG file is available for each distribution/architecture/database version combination. Browse http://yum.postgresql.org and find your correct RPM. For example, to install PostgreSQL 9.4 on CentOS 6 64-bit:

yum localinstall http://yum.postgresql.org/9.4/redhat/rhel-6-x86_64/pgdg-centos94-9.4-1.noarch.rpm

Install PostgreSQL

To list available packages:

yum list postgres*

For example, to install a basic PostgreSQL 9.4 server:

yum install postgresql94-server

Other packages can be installed according to your needs.

Post-installation commands

After installing the packages, a database needs to be initialized and configured.

In the commands below, the value of <name> will vary depending on the version of PostgreSQL used.

For PostgreSQL version 9.0 and above, the <name> includes the major.minor version of PostgreSQL, e.g., postgresql-9.4

For versions 8.x, the <name> is always postgresql (without the version signifier).

Data Directory

The PostgreSQL data directory contains all of the data files for the database. The variable PGDATA is used to reference this directory.

For PostgreSQL version 9.0 and above, the default data directory is:

/var/lib/pgsql/<name>/data

For example:

/var/lib/pgsql/9.4/data

For versions 7.x and 8.x, default data directory is:

/var/lib/pgsql/data/

Initialize

The first command (only needed once) is to initialize the database in PGDATA.

service <name> initdb

E.g. for version 9.4:

service postgresql-9.4 initdb

If the previous command did not work, try directly calling the setup binary, located in a similar naming scheme:

/usr/pgsql-y.x/bin/postgresqlyx-setup initdb

E.g. for version 9.4:

/usr/pgsql-9.4/bin/postgresql94-setup initdb

Startup

If you want PostgreSQL to start automatically when the OS starts:

chkconfig <name> on

E.g. for version 9.4:

chkconfig postgresql-9.4 on

In RHEL 7+, try:

systemctl enable postgresql

Control service

To control the database service, use:

service <name> <command>

where <command> can be:

• start : start the database
• stop : stop the database
• restart : stop/start the database; used to read changes to core configuration files
• reload : reload pg_hba.conf file while keeping database running

E.g. to start version 9.4:

service postgresql-9.4 start

With RHEL 7.1+ and CentOS 7.1+, Systemd is introduced. Use this instead:

systemctl enable postgresql-9.4.service systemctl start postgresql-9.4.service

Removing

To remove everything:

yum erase postgresql94*

Or remove individual packages as desired.