Subject: postgres 4.2 beta installation

From: "John S. Robinson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 8 Apr 1994 19:06:00 -0400

I have tried to build and install postgres 4.2 on sparc 10's running
	4.1.3 on several occasions with varying degrees of success.

In each case, initdb completes successfully. In each case when
	postmaster is run it core dumps. In each case if I run postmaster
	by specifying its full path length, postmaster will run. 

In most cases when I attempt to run createdb, I am given an error
	message stating that the database model template1 does not exist
	(even though initdb completed without complaint). Running
	createuser has essentially the same effect. The case in which I
	was able to successfully run createuser and createdb was on a
	machine I did not have root access on, hence I had to set the
	variables BINGRP, BINOWN, LIBGRP, LIBOWN, MANGRP, and MANOWN.

Has anyone had similar problems? I suspect my next step may be to try
	building postgres with the aforementioned variables set to
	postgres.

---

From: [email-masked] (Paul M. Aoki)
Date: Fri, 08 Apr 94 17:44:36 -0700

> 	by specifying its full path length, postmaster will run. 

i have no idea what executables you have where in your $PATH, but
the fact that an absolute pathname for postmaster works makes me
wonder..

> 	(even though initdb completed without complaint).

this indicates that the postmaster is looking in the wrong place 
for its database directory.  this is not detected until runtime.
for example:

faerie:postgres (11)> setenv PGDATA /no/such/directory
faerie:postgres (12)> postmaster&
[1] 12232
faerie:postgres (13)> monitor template1
FATAL 1:Apr  8 16:41:19:database template1 does not exist, bailing out...
faerie:postgres (14)> 

if your environment is such that initdb and the postmaster are working 
in different places (for example, you set PGDATA in one shell and set 
it to something else in another; or if you ran initdb and *then* set
PGDATA) you have an obvious problem.

untangling environment dependencies and inconsistencies is so much
fun.  someone else is having an awful time with the same kind of hair;
the output from regression plainly indicate that the 4.2 regression 
tests are being run on a set of 4.1 binaries/databases (4.1 is also 
installed).  for example, it doesn't understand the new define 
{function,operator, aggregate} syntax or the new array syntax, and 
gives the *exact same* error messages that my copy of 4.1 gives when
presented with the same syntax..  you would like to believe that it's
easy to figure out what's going on in this kind of case, but sometimes 
it isn't..
--
  Paul M. Aoki  |  CS Div., Dept. of EECS, UCB  |  [email-masked]
                |  Berkeley, CA 94720           |  ...!uunet!ucbvax!aoki