2 <Title>Setting Up Your Environment</Title>
5 This section discusses how to set up
6 your own environment so that you can use frontend
7 applications. We assume <ProductName>Postgres</ProductName> has already been
8 successfully installed and started; refer to the Administrator's Guide
9 and the installation notes
10 for how to install Postgres.
14 <ProductName>Postgres</ProductName> is a client/server application. As a user,
15 you only need access to the client portions of the installation (an example
16 of a client application is the interactive monitor <Application>psql</Application>).
18 we will assume that <ProductName>Postgres</ProductName> has been installed in the
19 directory <FileName>/usr/local/pgsql</FileName>. Therefore, wherever
20 you see the directory <FileName>/usr/local/pgsql</FileName> you should
21 substitute the name of the directory where <ProductName>Postgres</ProductName> is
23 All <ProductName>Postgres</ProductName> commands are installed in the directory
24 <FileName>/usr/local/pgsql/bin</FileName>. Therefore, you should add
25 this directory to your shell command path. If you use
26 a variant of the Berkeley C shell, such as <Application>csh</Application> or <Application>tcsh</Application>,
29 set path = ( /usr/local/pgsql/bin path )
31 in the <FileName>.login</FileName> file in your home directory. If you use
32 a variant of the Bourne shell, such as <Application>sh</Application>, <Application>ksh</Application>, or
33 <Application>bash</Application>, then you would add
35 PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/bin PATH
38 to the <FileName>.profile</FileName> file in your home directory.
39 From now on, we will assume that you have added the
40 <ProductName>Postgres</ProductName> bin directory to your path. In addition, we
41 will make frequent reference to <Quote>setting a shell
42 variable</Quote> or <Quote>setting an environment variable</Quote> throughout
43 this document. If you did not fully understand the
44 last paragraph on modifying your search path, you
45 should consult the UNIX manual pages that describe your
46 shell before going any further.
50 If your site administrator has not set things up in the
51 default way, you may have some more work to do. For example, if the database
52 server machine is a remote machine, you
53 will need to set the <Acronym>PGHOST</Acronym> environment variable to the name
54 of the database server machine. The environment variable
55 <Acronym>PGPORT</Acronym> may also have to be set. The bottom line is this: if
56 you try to start an application program and it complains
57 that it cannot connect to the <Application>postmaster</Application>,
58 you should immediately consult your site administrator to make sure that your
59 environment is properly set up.