Successful installation of PostgreSQL

I just succeeded in installing PostgreSQL according to the
installation instructions. Therein I find:
failed: int2 and int4, due to different error message format.

I used configure with option "--with-mb=LATIN3", and the regression
tests complained about some missing files (latin3.sql or similar).
================================================================

Some comments on the INSTALL file:
If it is installed, you can get the PID more easily and reliably via
pidof; on my system, using bash, it's simply

$ kill `/sbin/pidof postmaster`

or

$ kill $(/sbin/pidof postmaster)
This did not happen for me. Anyway, there is a "cat ../register.txt"
at the end of the makefile, and /usr/src/pgsql/src/man is probably
already taken care of in step 12 ("Install the man and HTML
documentation").
The solution for Linux in the contrib-directory would not work for my
system (SuSE 5.3, but probably also the more current SuSEs); my simple
solution (from my installation of version 6.3.2) is as follows:

/etc/rc.d/init.d/functions -------------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
#
# postgres.init Start postgres back end system.
#
# Author: Thomas Lockhart <lockhart@alumni.caltech.edu>
# modified from other startup files in the RedHat Linux distribution
# ------- modified Albert Reiner, 19990425:
#
PGACCOUNT="postgres" # the postgres account (you called it something else?)
POSTMASTER="postmaster" # this probably won't change

PGLOGFILE="/home/postgres/log.postgres"

#PGOPTS="-i -B 256" # -i to enable TCP/IP rather than Unix socket
#PGOPTS="-B 256" # Do we really need 256 buffers? a.r.
PGOPTS=

# See how we were called.
case "$1" in
start)
if [ -f ${PGLOGFILE} ]
then
mv ${PGLOGFILE} ${PGLOGFILE}.old
fi
echo -n "Starting postgres: "
# force full login to get path names
su --login --command="$POSTMASTER $PGOPTS >& $PGLOGFILE &" \
$PGACCOUNT > /dev/null &
sleep 5
pid=`/sbin/pidof ${POSTMASTER}`
echo -n "${POSTMASTER} [$pid]"
echo
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping postgres: "
pid=`/sbin/pidof ${POSTMASTER}`
if [ "$pid" != "" ] ; then
echo -n "${POSTMASTER} [$pid]"
kill -TERM $pid
sleep 1
fi
echo
;;
*)
echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop}"
exit 1
esac

exit 0
----------------------------------------------------------------

This does not rely on /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions (non-existent on SuSE
5.3) or some environment variables set by Red Hat. To use this script
one has to:

*) login as root

*) copy the script (possibly after editing to suit one's needs)
to /sbin/init.d/postgres

*) # cd rc2.d

*) # ln -s ../postgres K10postgres

*) # ln -s ../postgres S85postgres

*) # cd /sbin/init.d/rc3.d

*) # ln -s ../postgres K10postgres

*) # ln -s ../postgres S85postgres

The numbers in the links' names (I used 85 for Starting and 10 for
Killing) can be chosen differently, but we don't want the postmaster
to run without a network enabled; hence the S..postgres-links should
have a rather high number (so that it is started late; less than the
number of zzreached), and the K..postgres-links should have a
relatively small number (so that postmaster is killed early during
shutdown).
/usr/src (and/or /usr/local) may be owned by root, so one may have to
su first.

I hope that some of the above remarks are of interest to you.

Albert Reiner.