Installing From Source
Download the actual source from ftp.postgresq.org/pub/postgresql-x.x.x.tar.gz (replacing x.x.x with the version; during the writing of this article, version 7.0 is stable and 7.1 is in development). You can use any method you like: Netscape, ncftp, wget, or whatever you are most comfortable with. The file is approximately 7.5 Mb.
While downloading, save the file in /usr/src/pgsql, or move it there after it is finished downloading.
Once this is done, we're ready to dig our hands into some Unix. You will have to uncompress the file; this task is something that will become familiar as long as you continue to use Unix.
euphoria:~$ cd /usr/src/pgsql euphoria:/usr/src/pgsql$ tar zxf postgresql-7.0.tar.gz euphoria:/usr/src/pgsql$ ls postgresql-7.0 postgresql-7.0.tar.gz euphoria:/usr/src/pgsql$
You will hear your hard drive whirl as it does its magic. As you can see, it has created a postgresql-7.0 directory. If you would like to see a more verbose output, use tar zxvf postgresql-7.0.tar.gz.
There are quite a few options that can be configured into PostgreSQL. The full description is available in the docs. For now we'll just do a basic install:
euphoria:/usr/src/pgsql$ cd postgresql-7.0/src/ euphoria:/usr/src/pgsql/postgresql-7.0/src$ ./configure
The configuration step took about 1 minute on my test machine. If you have problems, people will often tell you to RTFM (read the fantastic manual), so installing the manual is a good idea. This is a very simple process.
euphoria:/usr/src/pgsql/postgresql-7.0/src$ cd /usr/src/pgsql/postgresql-7.0/doc/ euphoria:/usr/src/pgsql/postgresql-7.0/doc$ gmake install