How To Install PostgreSQL on AlmaLinux 9

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install PostgreSQL on AlmaLinux 9. For those of you who didn’t know, PostgreSQL is an open-source, relational database system that uses SQL to store and scale complicated workloads. This database system dates back to 1986, introduced as part of the Postgres project at the University of California at Berkeley. Ever since, there has been 30 years of active development on the core platform to gain the current reputation of reliability, data integrity, robust feature set, extensibility e.t.c

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of the PostgreSQL database on AlmaLinux 9. You can follow the same instructions for CentOS and Rocky Linux.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: AlmaLinux 9.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• SSH access to the server (or just open Terminal if you’re on a desktop).
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install PostgreSQL on AlmaLinux 9

Step 1. First, let’s start by ensuring your system is up-to-date.

sudo dnf clean all
sudo dnf install epel-release
sudo dnf update

Step 2. Installing PostgreSQL on AlmaLinux 9.

By default, PostgreSQL is not available on the AlmaLinux 9 AppStream repositories. Now we import the repository directly from PostgreSQL using the following command below:

sudo dnf install http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-9-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm

After the repository was added, now install PostgreSQL with the following command:

sudo dnf install postgresql14-server

Let’s also install the Contrib package which provides several additional features for the PostgreSQL database system:

sudo dnf install postgresql14-contrib

Once the installation is complete, initialize the PostgreSQL database with the following command:

sudo /usr/pgsql-14/bin/postgresql-14-setup initdb

Next, start the PostgreSQL service and enable it to automatically start on boot by running the following command:

sudo systemctl enable postgresql-14 --now
sudo systemctl status postgresql-14

Step 3. Accessing the PostgreSQL command prompt.

Once installing the PostgreSQL database server, by default, it creates a user ‘postgres’ with role ‘postgres’. It also creates a system account with the same name ‘postgres’. So to connect to the Postgres server, log in to your system as a user of Postgres and connect database:

sudo -i -u postgres

You can access a PostgreSQL prompt using the psql utility:

psql

Now you are logged in to the PostgreSQL database server. To check login info use the following command from the database command prompt:

postgres-# \conninfo

To disconnect from the PostgreSQL database command prompt just type the below command and press enter. It will return you back to the AlmaLinux command prompt:

postgres-# \q

Congratulations! You have successfully installed PostgreSQL. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing PostgreSQL 14 on your AlmaLinux 9 system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official PostgreSQL website.