How to Install PostgreSQL 11 on CentOS/RHEL 7/6

PostgreSQL 11 Released. It is an open-source object-relational, highly scalable, SQL-compliant database management system. PostgreSQL is developed at the University of California at Berkeley Computer Science Department. This article will help you to install PostgreSQL 11 on CentOS/RHEL 7/6 system.

This article has been tested on CentOS Linux release 7.5

Step 1 – Configure Yum Repository

Firstly you need to configure the PostgreSQL repository in your system. Use one of the below commands as per your operating system version.

sudo yum install https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-7-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm

For more details visit PostgreSQL repositories link page where you can get repository package rpm for various operating systems.

Step 2 – Installing PostgreSQL on CentOS 7

After enabling PostgreSQL yum repository in your system use following command to install PostgreSQL 11 on your system with yum package manager.

yum install postgresql11-server

This will also install some additional required packages on your system. Enter y to confirm and complete the installation process.

Step 3 – Initialize PGDATA

After that, you need to initialize the PostgreSQL instance. In other words, this will create a data directory and other configuration files on your system. To initialize the database use the below command.

/usr/pgsql-11/bin/postgresql-11-setup initdb

The above command will take some time to initialize PostgreSQL first time. PGDATA environment variable contains the path of data directory.

PostgreSQL 11 default data directory location is /var/lib/pgsql/11/data

Setp 4 – Start PostgreSQL Server

To start PostgreSQL service using the following command as per your operating systems. Also, enable PostgreSQL service to autostart on system boot.

systemctl enable postgresql-11.service
systemctl start postgresql-11.service

Step 5 – Verify PostgreSQL Installation

After completing the above all steps. Your PostgreSQL 11 server is ready to use. Log in to your server to verify the connection.

su - postgres -c "psql"

psql (11.0)
Type "help" for help.

postgres=# 

You may create a password for user postgres for security purposes.

postgres=# \password postgres

In conclusion, You have successfully installed the PostgreSQL database server on CentOS/RHEL 7 system.