Installing and configuring PostgreSQL 9.3 and 9.4 on RHEL 7

First, as usual, you need to install the repository package. Please visit the repo RPMs page. You will see a link to the repo package links, like for 9.4 and 9.3.

So, to install 9.4 repo RPMs for RHEL 7, run:

yum install http://yum.postgresql.org/9.4/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/pgdg-redhat94-9.4-1.noarch.rpm

to install 9.3 repo RPMs for RHEL 7, run:

yum install http://yum.postgresql.org/9.3/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/pgdg-redhat93-9.3-1.noarch.rpm

Next step is installing RPMs. You can either install the individual RPMs, or use groupinstall feature that install -libs, -server, -contrib along with the client package.

To install PostgreSQL 9.4 on RHEL 7, please run

yum groupinstall "PostgreSQL Database Server 9.4 PGDG"

To install PostgreSQL 9.3 on RHEL 7, please run

yum groupinstall "PostgreSQL Database Server 9.3 PGDG"

The next step is initializing the cluster. This is done using a command line tool, which is designed for the RPMs. Please run this command as root.

For 9.4:

/usr/pgsql-9.4/bin/postgresql94-setup initdb

For 9.3:

/usr/pgsql-9.3/bin/postgresql93-setup initdb

If there is no error message, you are ready to start the cluster. This is done using the unit files:


For 9.4:

systemctl start postgresql-9.4.service

For 9.3:

systemctl start postgresql-9.3.service

The postmasters should start, if there is no port conflict, etc.

As of RHEL 7, as done in the Fedora packages for two years, the unit files are located under /lib/systemd/system/ directory. Please do not edit these files directly. Instead, if you want to make any changes, create a copy of them under /etc/systemd/system/ , and edit those files. Run

systemctl daemon-reload

after adding a custom unit file.

Also, as of RHEL 7, we got rid of the PGPORT variable in unit files. This will fix the issues caused by changing the port number both in init script / unit file and postgresql.conf. The port can now only be changed in postgresql.conf.

In order to start PostgreSQL on boot, you need to enable the unit file:

For 9.4:

systemctl enable postgresql-9.4.service

For 9.3:

systemctl enable postgresql-9.3.service

To restart or reload the instance, you can use the following commands:


For 9.4:

systemctl restart postgresql-9.4.service

systemctl reload postgresql-9.4.service

For 9.3:

systemctl restart postgresql-9.3.service

systemctl reload postgresql-9.3.service

Please let us know if you see any packaging issues.