Re: [Gnumed-devel] Postgres installation and setup in lenny

[Karsten Hilbert]

> When installing debian, selecting the option to install
>     SQL database
> installs postgresql software including the database server and seems  
> also to install an unprivileged user account "postgres" although I  
> did not yet find where that is documented.
That's pretty standard in two ways:

Each PG installation typically has one system account associated with it (for 
maintenance).

Each daemon/server installed in Debian uses a dedicated system user to run 
under.

> However the installation of "SQL database" seems to create no directory
>     /usr/local/pgsql

That would be the wrong place. Since the distro installed it and not the
admin in ways unknown to the distro it should go in either or /var /srv or even 
/home
(since the files are owned by user postgres).

> making me wonder if the above something normally needed to be done  
> manually?
No. The data directory for PG on Debian is somewhere under /var/postgresql/
if I recall correctly. Just su from root to postgres and check where you are in
the directory tree.

Or cat /etc/passwd to show the homedir of postgres.

> I do not mind the manual work... I am only just checking if it is any  
> sign of a problem in what is supposed to have been "normal" postgres  
> installation behaviour by tasksel.
I am 99.99% sure there IS a PG cluster initialized for you.

> Do I just go ahead and create it as root and then chown to belong to  
> postgres?
Don't. There already is a cluster.

> One more question about where the gnumed data should "live" on a  
> server... might we suggest, for consistency across deployments, any  
> preferred place where the server would keep its gnumed data?
If you are referring to patient data inside GNUmed -- we very much don't care. 
That is
precisely the task of the PostgreSQL database - to keep the data *somewhere*.

Only a local admin can know whether it might be useful to point the PG
server to a specific place for storing the data (such as to
/mnt/really/chunky/raid/).

If you are referring to an unpacked installation tarball, then, well, I usually 
put
it under /root/.gnumed/server-installation/ or some such.

Karsten
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