How To Install PostgreSQL on Ubuntu 16.04

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install and configuration of PostgreSQL on your Ubuntu 16.04 server. For those of you who didn’t know, PostgreSQL is a free, open-source object-relational database management system (object-RDBMS), similar to MySQL, and is standards-compliant and extensible. It is commonly used as a back-end for web and mobile applications. PostgreSQL, or ‘Postgres’ as it is nicknamed, adopts the ANSI/ISO SQL standards together, with the revisions.

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 PostgreSQL on a Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) server.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus).
• 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 Ubuntu 16.04

Step 1. First, make sure that all your system packages are up-to-date by running the following apt-get commands in the terminal.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2. Installing the PostgreSQL server.

PostgreSQL is available in the default repositories. So enter the following command from the Terminal to install it:

apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib phppgadmin

Step 3. Access PostgreSQL command prompt.

After 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 postgres server, login to your system as user postgres and connect database:

su - postgres
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 Ubuntu command prompt:

postgres-# \q

Create a new user and database:

### For example, let us create a new user called “idroot” with password “idrootnet”, and database called “idrootdb”. ###
sudo -u postgres createuser -D -A -P idroot
sudo -u postgres createdb -O idroot idrootdb

Step 4. Configure Apache2 for phpPgAdmin.

phpPgAdmin is a web-based administration tool for PostgreSQL. It is perfect for PostgreSQL DBAs, newbies, and hosting services. You need to configure apache for phpPgAdmin. Edit the file /etc/apache2/conf-available/phppgadmin.conf:

nano /etc/apache2/conf-available/phppgadmin.conf

Comment out the line #Require local by adding a # in front of the line and add below the line allow from all so that you can access from your browser:

Step 5. Configure phpPgAdmin.

Next, edit the file /etc/phppgadmin/config.inc.php:

nano /etc/phppgadmin/config.inc.php

Now change the following option:

$conf[‘extra_login_security'] = true;
to
$conf[‘extra_login_security'] = false;

Now, we can restart Apache and phpPgAdmin so that the changes take place:

systemctl restart postgresql
systemctl restart apache2
systemctl enable postgresql
systemctl enable apache2

Step 6. Accessing phpPgAdmin.

phpPgAdmin will be available on HTTP port 80 by default. Open your favorite browser and navigate to http://your-domain.com/phppgadmin or http://server-ip/phppgadmin. If you are using a firewall, please open port 80 to enable access to the control panel.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed the PostgreSQL Server. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing PostgreSQL in Ubuntu 16.04 (Xenial Xerus) systems. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official PostgreSQL website.

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