Before I wrote this blog post, I had thought there was no binary package for PostgreSQL server for FreeBSD 11 running on Raspberry Pi. Hmm… how wrong I was! I just wasted the whole night compiling Postgres from source. DOH!

Anyhow, here’s the step I took to do it. If you’re familiar with FreeBSD, there’s nothing new here. But, I only use FreeBSD once in awhile, and so I tend to forget a lot what I do.

cd /usr/ports/databases/postgresql94-server
make config
make install clean

After a very long time of waiting, I was presented with the following message:

To initialize the database, run                                                                                              
                                                                                                                             
  /usr/local/etc/rc.d/postgresql initdb                                                                                      
                                                                                                                             
You can then start PostgreSQL by running:                                                                                    
                                                                                                                             
  /usr/local/etc/rc.d/postgresql start                                                                                       
                                                                                                                             
For postmaster settings, see ~pgsql/data/postgresql.conf                                                                     
                                                                                                                             
NB. FreeBSD's PostgreSQL port logs to syslog by default                                                                      
    See ~pgsql/data/postgresql.conf for more info                                                                            
                                                                                                                             
======================================================================                                                       
                                                                                                                             
To run PostgreSQL at startup, add                                                                                            
'postgresql_enable="YES"' to /etc/rc.conf      

Let’s initialize the database:

 # /usr/local/etc/rc.d/postgresql initdb                                
Cannot 'initdb' postgresql. Set postgresql_enable to YES in /etc/rc.conf or use 'oneinitdb' instead of 'initdb'.

Ahh.. ok.

# echo 'postgresql_enable="YES"' >> /etc/rc.conf

Please note that I used ‘>>’ to append the above line to /etc/rc.conf. Alternatively, just append that line with a text editor such as Vim or Nano.

# /usr/local/etc/rc.d/postgresql initdb                                
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "pgsql".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale "C".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Data page checksums are disabled.

creating directory /usr/local/pgsql/data ... ok
creating subdirectories ... ok
selecting default max_connections ... 100
selecting default shared_buffers ... 128MB
selecting dynamic shared memory implementation ... posix
creating configuration files ... ok
creating template1 database in /usr/local/pgsql/data/base/1 ... ok
initializing pg_authid ... ok
initializing dependencies ... ok
creating system views ... ok
loading system objects' descriptions ... ok
creating collations ... ok
creating conversions ... ok
creating dictionaries ... ok
setting privileges on built-in objects ... ok
creating information schema ... ok
loading PL/pgSQL server-side language ... ok
vacuuming database template1 ... ok 
opying template1 to template0 ... ok
copying template1 to postgres ... ok
syncing data to disk ... ok

WARNING: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections
You can change this by editing pg_hba.conf or using the option -A, or
--auth-local and --auth-host, the next time you run initdb.

Success. You can now start the database server using:

    /usr/local/bin/postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
or
    /usr/local/bin/pg_ctl -D /usr/local/pgsql/data -l logfile start

That’s it. Well, next time I want to install Postgres server again, I’ll run this command instead:

# pkg iinstall postgresql94-server-9.4.2