======================================================= Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for PostgreSQL >= V6.1 Linux Specific TO BE READ IN CONJUNCTION WITH THE NORMAL FAQ ======================================================= last updated: Fri Jun 19 13:35:00 BST 1998 current maintainer: Andrew C.R. Martin (martin@biochem.ucl.ac.uk) original author: Andrew C.R. Martin (martin@biochem.ucl.ac.uk) Changes in this version (* = modified, + = new, - = removed): +1.23) Why does the compile fail with messages about F_BOOLIN, F_BOOLOUT and F_BYTEAIN being undeclared? This file is divided approximately as follows: 1.*) Installing PostgreSQL 2.*) Compiling accessory programs 3.*) Runtime Problems Questions answered: 1.1) What changes do I need to make to src/Makefile.global or src/Makefile.custom and are there any other changes needed? 1.2) Why do I get problems with missing libreadline? 1.3) [REDHAT] Why do I get problems with missing libdl and dlfcn.h? 1.4) [SLACKWARE 3.1] Why do I get problems with missing libdl and dlfcn.h? 1.5) My compile of the backend dies complaining about the include file dlfcn.h missing 1.6) GCC complains about an ignored option -fpic 1.7) I get warnings of the form warning: cast from pointer to integer of different size 1.8) [SuSE-Linux 4.2-4.4] Where is curses and termcap? 1.9) Why do I get problems with ld.so? 1.10) Why do I get `yy_flush_buffer undefined' errors? 1.11) How do I compile PostgreSQL on an a.out system? 1.12) Why does make fail with: yacc -d /disk2/PostgreSQL/src/backend/parser/gram.y make: /usr/bin/make: cannot execute binary file 1.13) What are the references in X11_LIB to libsocket and libnsl in src/Makefile.global? 1.14) [DEBIAN] Where is libtermcap? 1.15) [REDHAT] Can I get PostgreSQL as an RPM? 1.16) While trying to compile a development version under Linux, compilation fails with a message like: In file included from /usr/include/sys/sem.h:8, from ipc.c:37: /usr/include/asm/bitops.h:32: warning: no previous prototype for Set_bit' .... make: *** [ipc.o] Error 1 1.17) When compiling postgres, gcc reports signal 11 and aborts. 1.18) Can I install 6.1.1 under MkLinux? 1.19) Why does make exit or crash? 1.20) How can I optimise for 486 or pentium processors 1.21) Why do I get strange results with printing times (for example in the regression test 'timespan')? 1.22) Why don't I get any shared libraries for libpq when I compile 6.3.2? 1.23) Why does the compile fail with messages about F_BOOLIN, F_BOOLOUT and F_BYTEAIN being undeclared? 2.1) The linker fails to find libX11 when compiling pgtclsh 3.1) I get an error reporting _fUnKy_POSTPORT_sTuFf_ undefined when running scripts like createuser 3.2) I run postmaster and after that system says 'Bad system call(Core dumped)' 3.3) When I try to start the Postmaster, why do I get an error of the form Failed Assertion("!(file != 0):(null)", File: "/usr/local/PostgreSQL/src/backend/storage/file/fd.c", Line: 257) !(file != 0) (0) initdb: could not create template database initdb: cleaning up. 3.4) Why doesn't createuser work? 3.5) Why do I get an error like: IpcMemoryCreate: memKey=155356396 , size=760632 , permission=384IpcMemoryCreate: shmget(..., create, ...) failed: Invalid argument 3.6) Why does psql fail with: psql: can't load library 'libpq.so.1' 3.7) Other strange behaviour 3.8) When PostgreSQL is running when the system is shutdown, Linux always fsck's the disk when rebooted. 3.9) Why does Query 32 in the regression tests take so long? 3.10) Why do I get funny rounding results in some date/time arithmetic, such as select '4 hours'::timespan; returning '3 hours 59 minutes 60 seconds'? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Section 1: Compiling PostgreSQL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.1) What changes do I need to make to src/Makefile.global or src/Makefile.custom and are there any other changes needed? Changes to the makefiles are most easily made by running the customize shell script in the src directory which will write a Makefile.custom for you. The only other change you may have to make is to replace Flex if you have version 2.5.3 which has a bug which generally manifests itself as createuser failing (See Question 3.4) If you modify the makefiles by hand, you *must* set the following variable: PORTNAME= linux You will also need to change the following to match your own installation: POSTGRESDIR If you switch on the USE_TCL option, you will need to set these: TCL_INCDIR= TCL_LIBDIR= TCL_LIB= TK_INCDIR= TK_LIBDIR= TK_LIB= X11_INCDIR= X11_LIBDIR= X11_LIB= On my Slackware3.0 system, these are: TCL_INCDIR= /usr/include/tcl TCL_LIBDIR= /usr/lib TCL_LIB= -ltcl TK_INCDIR= /usr/include/tcl TK_LIBDIR= /usr/lib TK_LIB= -ltk X11_INCDIR= /usr/include/X11 X11_LIBDIR= /usr/X386/lib X11_LIB= -lX11 You may also make any other changes you need as documented in the INSTALL file and in Makefile.global 1.2) Why do I get problems with missing libreadline? Linux systems generally don't come with the GNU readline library installed. Either ensure you do not activate the readline options in src/Makefile.global or src/Makefile.custom or install the GNU readline library. Note that Debian Linux (like FreeBSD) does come with readline installed. 1.3) [REDHAT] Why do I get problems with missing libdl and dlfcn.h? This manifests itself as being unable to link with functions such as dlopen(), dlclose(), etc. during the last phase of the compilation. The libdl library is used for dynamic linking of user-supplied functions at run-time. For some reason this library was missed out from the Redhat distribution. It seems that the latest Redhat 4.0 (Colgate) fixes this. RedHat now have a new ld.so RPM package on their FTP site. Simply grab: ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/devel/i386/RedHat/RPMS/ld.so-1.7.14-4.i386.rpm Install the RPM file in the usual way and off you go! NOTE! You will have to re-run configure and do a make clean after installing the library and before recompiling. There has been one report of a corrupted system resulting from programs accessing these libraries while updating them (not altogether surprising). Consequently it is a good idea to reboot the system before installing the new libraries and to have as little running as possible during this upgrade. Going into single-user mode is probably a good idea! If you want to do it the hard way, you can obtain the library and the header file from: ftp://tsx-11.mit.edu/pub/linux/packages/GCC/ld.so-1.7.14.tar.gz Alternatively, you may find precompiled binaries in distributions/debian/buzz/binary-i386/base/ld.so-1.7.14-4.deb on the same site, or follow the instructions given for question 1.2 for correcting the same error with early releases of Slackware 3.1. Don't use this method unless you know what you are doing! 1.4) [SLACKWARE 3.1] Why do I get problems with missing libdl and dlfcn.h? This manifests itself as being unable to link with functions such as dlopen(), dlclose(), etc. during the last phase of the compilation. See the answer to question 1.3. Slackware up to version 3.0 was supplied with this library and include file and they seem to be back in again in the latest versions of 3.1, but the early 3.1 releases (before 9th September 1996) had them missing and many CD-ROM versions will have been pressed from the first 3.1 releases. There has been one report of a corrupted system resulting from programs accessing these libraries while updating them (not altogether surprising). Consequently it is a good idea to reboot the system before installing the new libraries and to have as little running as possible during this upgrade. Going into single-user mode is probably a good idea! The easiest fix is to obtain the file ldso.tgz from the a4 disk of a more recent Slackware distribution and unpack this file from the root (/) directory, then do sh install/doinst.sh to complete the installation. Follow this with ldconfig NOTE! You will have to re-run configure and do a make clean after installing the library and before recompiling. If you want to install manually, you must first install the file dlfcn.h in /usr/include. Second, install the file libdl.so.1.7.14 (or whatever the latest release is) in /lib, then do: cd /lib ln -sf libdl.so.1.7.14 libdl.so.1 ln -sf libdl.so.1 libdl.so On some systems (depending on your GCC configuration) it may be necessary to do: cd /usr/lib ln -sf /lib/libdl.so . Finally ldconfig NOTE! You will have to re-run configure and do a make clean after installing the library and before recompiling. 1.5) My compile of the backend dies complaining about the include file dlfcn.h missing See the answer to question 1.3/1.4. Don't forget that if you are using an a.out system you must first have installed the dld package (which is not supplied with most a.out systems) to have dlfcn.h at all. See Question 1.11. 1.6) GCC complains about an ignored option -fpic Earlier versions of GCC accepted either -fpic or -fPIC. It appears that more recent versions (V2.7.2?) require -fPIC. If you are using an ELF version of Linux, this can safely be ignored as -fPIC is the default. You can correct this by editing src/Makefile.global and changing CFLAGS_SL 1.7) I get warnings of the form warning: cast from pointer to integer of different size These were seen in earlier versions of Postgres95 and could safely be ignored. PostgreSQL V6.0 should compile with no warnings except those related to system header files (which can also be safely ignored). 1.8) [SuSE-Linux 4.2-4.4] Where is curses and termcap? SuSE-Linux 4.2 has ncurses but not curses. 4.4 appears to have both. SuSE-Linux also has the termcap library is in /usr/lib/termcap instead of in /usr/lib. PostgreSQL (up to V6.0) ----------------------- Set the value of CURSES_LIB in src/Makefile.custom to -lncurses (or do this through the customize script). Add the following line to src/Makefile.custom: LDADD_BE+= -L/usr/lib/termcap You may need to edit src/bin/psql/Makefile and change: ifeq ($(PORTNAME), linux) LD_ADD+= to: ifeq ($(PORTNAME), linux) LD_ADD+= -ltermcap PostgreSQL (V6.1) ----------------- The configure script doesn't know to look in /usr/lib/termcap for the termcap library, so you should specify this as one of the library directories when asked for additional directories to search. If this doesn't work (I don't have SuSE to verify that it does) then after running configure, you need to edit src/Makefile.global and add -ltermcap to the LDFLAGS line (after -lreadline). (Alternatively, you can modify src/Makefile.custom before running configure.) Some versions of SuSE provide only ncurses, so you may need to force use of ncurses rather than curses by changing -lcurses to -lncurses. (Reported true for SuSE 5.1) 1.9) Why do I get problems with ld.so? If you get problems with ld.so, another library required under ELF for dynamic loading, then you have messed up your installation or (more likely) upgrade of Linux. See the answers to Question 1.3/1.4. You may need to install ld.so.x.y.z in /lib and run ldconfig. The most recent stable release of the ld package is 1.7.14 At the time of writing, 1.8.x versions of ld are experimental. 1.10) Why do I get `yy_flush_buffer undefined' errors? This isn't really Linux specific, but is common on older Linux installations. You must have a recent version of flex (2.5.2 or later) to compile PostgreSQL. Note that flex 2.5.3 has a bug: see Question 3.4. 1.11) How do I compile PostgreSQL on an a.out system? First, you must install the dld library. This may be obtained from Sunsite as: Linux/libs/dld.3.2.7.tar.gz (ftp://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/libs/dld.3.2.7.tar.gz) Second, add the following line to src/Makefile.custom: LINUX_ELF= (or use the customize script) 1.12) Why does make fail with: yacc -d /disk2/PostgreSQL/src/backend/parser/gram.y make: /usr/bin/make: cannot execute binary file This was a problem in earlier versions of Postgres95. The default for PostgreSQL is to use bison -y rather than yacc. yacc is generally implemented as a script which invokes bison -y For some reason (certain versions of make? certain versions of bash?) make is unable to execute this script file. To correct this, simply edit src/mk/port/postgres.mk.linux and, at the end of the file, change: # YACC = bison -y to YACC = bison -y 1.13) What are the references in X11_LIB to libsocket and libnsl in src/Makefile.global? This was a problem in 1.08 (they are Sun Solaris specific). It is fixed in 1.09 and 6.0 1.14) [DEBIAN] Where is libtermcap? Debian Linux comes without the termcap library and uses ncurses (which uses terminfo instead). There is no need to change the CURSES_LIB variable in src/bin/psql/Makefile since Debian provides a link from libncurses to libcurses (unlike SuSE-Linux --- see Question 1.8). You may need to edit src/bin/psql/Makefile and comment out the change: ifeq ($(PORTNAME), linux) LD_ADD+= -ltermcap to: ifeq ($(PORTNAME), linux) LD_ADD+= 1.15) [REDHAT] Can I get PostgreSQL as an RPM? Yes! Michal Mosiewicz (http://www.pdi.lodz.pl/~mimo) has kindly put together an RPM for PostgreSQL V6.0 on Intel architectures which he has uploaded to ftp://ftp.redhat.org/pub/Incoming/Postgres-6.0-1.i386.rpm This is a pre-compiled version, the source RPM is on its was as I write (3rd Feb 1997). 1.16) While trying to compile a development version under Linux, compilation fails with a message like: In file included from /usr/include/sys/sem.h:8, from ipc.c:37: /usr/include/asm/bitops.h:32: warning: no previous prototype for Set_bit' .... make: *** [ipc.o] Error 1 The problem is that Linux provides no prototypes for these inline functions. The solution is to go into the .../src/backend/storage/ipc directory and edit the Makefile. Change the line CFLAGS+=$(INCLUDE_OPT) to CFLAGS+=$(INCLUDE_OPT) -Wno-error Do the same in the ../src/backend/storage/lmgr directory. 1.17) When compiling postgres, gcc reports signal 11 and aborts. More specifically: gcc: Internal compiler error: program cc1 got fatal signal 11 This may be a hardware/memory problem. PortgreSQL is a big program, and large gcc compilations (such as building PostgreSQL or bebuilding the kernel) stress memory like few other programs, resulting in errors that do not occur in normal operation. Lesser operating systems are also unlikely to stress the hardware to this degree so you may never see any problems under DOS/Windows. More information on this problem at: http://www.bitwizard.nl/sig11 From this Sig11 FAQ, there appears to be a specific problem with Redhat 5.0 gcc running on Cyrix processors. See the URL above for more details! 1.18) Can I install 6.1.1 under MkLinux? Tatsuo Ishii has done this under MkLinux DR2.1 update2 after a small patch available from: ftp://ftp.sra.co.jp/pub/cmd/postgres/6.1.1/mklinux.patch.gz 1.19) Why does make exit or crash? There have been a couple of reports of gmake either just exiting early or seg faulting. The latter problem was reported with gmake 3.74 - upgrading to 3.76.1 solved the problem. However, 3.74 is known to work fine in other people's setups. In short, try upgrading gmake to the latest version you can find before reporting this as a problem 1.20) How can I optimise for 486 or pentium processors The default compiler flags perform no optimisation for 486 or Pentium processors. To add such optimisation, edit Makefile.custom and add: CFLAGS+= -m486 or (for the new compilers that most people are not yet running) CFLAGS+= -mpentium or CFLAGS+= -mpentiumpro 1.21) Why do I get strange results with printing times (for example in the regression test 'timespan')? The times are appearing as: '4 hours 59 mins 60.00 secs' instead of '5 hours' This is a problem with the glibc2 library which comes with Redhat 5.0. Update your glibc to the latest RedHat version for v5.0/hurricane. Anything prior to glibc-2.0.7 is likely to have the problem. 1.22) Why don't I get any shared libraries for libpq when I compile 6.3.2? There was some last minute breakage of the Linux configuration for v6.3.2. Look in ftp://postgresql.org/pub/patches/ for a few fix-ups, including a linux_elf patch. 1.23) Why does the compile fail with messages about F_BOOLIN, F_BOOLOUT and F_BYTEAIN being undeclared? The actual messages are something like: -I/usr/include/readline -O2 -Wall -Wmissing-prototypes -I.. -Wno-error -c bootstrap.c -o bootstrap.o bootstrap.c:160: `F_BOOLIN' undeclared here (not in a function) bootstrap.c:160: initializer element for `Procid[0].inproc' is not constant bootstrap.c:160: `F_BOOLOUT' undeclared here (not in a function) bootstrap.c:160: initializer element for `Procid[0].outproc' is not constant bootstrap.c:161: `F_BYTEAIN' undeclared here (not in a function) bootstrap.c:161: initializer element for `Procid[1].inproc' is not constant This is tricky unless you know why it happens, as these constants don't seem to be defined anywhere. The solution is to make sure that cpp is included in your path before you start the make. On Redhat 5.1, cpp is in /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/2.7.2.3 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Section 2: Compiling accessory programs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.1) The linker fails to find libX11 when compiling pgtclsh Add the following to src/Makefile.custom X11_LIBDIR = /usr/X11R6/lib ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Section 3: Runtime Problems ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.1) I get an error reporting _fUnKy_POSTPORT_sTuFf_ undefined when running scripts like createuser This is a bug in V1.06-V1.07 of Postgres and is fixed in V1.08 and above. 3.2) I run postmaster and after that system says 'Bad system call(Core dumped)' This indicates that you have not compiled shared memory support into your kernel. You need to recompile the Linux kernel to add this feature. 3.3) When I try to start the Postmaster, why do I get an error of the form Failed Assertion("!(file != 0):(null)", File: "/usr/local/PostgreSQL/src/backend/storage/file/fd.c", Line: 257) !(file != 0) (0) initdb: could not create template database initdb: cleaning up. Your permissions on the file /dev/null are wrong. ls -l /dev/null should give you something like: crw-rw-rw- 1 root wheel 2, 2 Oct 8 18:41 /dev/null Correct the permissions using: chmod a+rw /dev/null 3.4) Why doesn't createuser work? There is a problem with Version 2.5.3 of GNU flex and createuser. Your options are to downgrade flex to V2.5.2, upgrade to V2.5.4 or apply a patch to V2.5.3 which is supplied in doc/README.flex You may obtain V2.5.4 from ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/flex-2.5.4.tar.gz 3.5) Why do I get an error like: IpcMemoryCreate: memKey=155356396 , size=760632 , permission=384IpcMemoryCreate: shmget(..., create, ...) failed: Invalid argument You haven't build IPC support into your Linux kernel. You will have to rebuild the kernel and switch on this option. 3.6) Why does psql fail with: psql: can't load library 'libpq.so.1' Psql has been compiled to link dynamically with the libpq library. To solve this, you should log in as root and edit the file /etc/ld.so.conf Add a single line at the end which gives the name of the PostgreSQL library directory (the lib subdirectory of your PostgreSQL installation) and run /sbin/ldconfig -v Alternatively, (and if you don't have root access), you may use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. The LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable contains a colon separated list of paths to be searched for shared libraries. This list is searched before the libraries specified by ldconfig. Therefore under Bash, you would do something like: export LD_LIBRARY_PATH='PathToPGSQL'/lib or, using tcsh setenv LD_LIBRARY_PATH 'PathToPGSQL'/lib replacing 'PathToPGSQL' with the appropriate path to your top level PostgreSQL directory Note that the ldd command can be used on a dynamically linked executable to list the paths to all the shared libraries upon which the executable depends. 3.7) Other strange behaviour I'm not sure what the symptoms might be except for nothing working properly, but it has been pointed out that one needs to be careful that the dynamic loader loads the correct version of the libpq library. If you have old versions lying around in your library path (for example in /usr/lib) these may get loaded instead of the new version you intended to load. Make sure you get them out of the way and look at Q3.6 for details of loading libraries. 3.8) When PostgreSQL is running when the system is shutdown, Linux always fsck's the disk when rebooted. There have been some reports of this happening and it seems to be a result of running PostgreSQL from /etc/inittab as suggested in the INSTALL document. You are therefore recommended to start the postmaster from an rc script. Under a Slackware-like release, you would modify /etc/rc.d/rc.local to start the postmaster. Under a RedHat-like release you should create a SysV style script in /etc/rc.d/rc3.d based on the /etc/rc.d/init.d skeleton file. There's a sample file in contrib/linux/postgres.init Here's another sample file supplied by John Robinson which you should modify as needed: #!/bin/sh # # postgreSQL.init This shell script takes care of starting and stopping # the PostgreSQL postmaster. # # Source function library. . /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions # Source networking configuration. . /etc/sysconfig/network # Check that networking is up. [ ${NETWORKING} = "no" ] && exit 0 # See how we were called. case "$1" in start) # Start daemons. echo -n "Starting postgres Postmaster daemon:" if [ -z "`pidofproc postmaster`" ] then su postgres -c "/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster -D /home/postgreSQL/data -p 5432 &" echo -n " postmaster" else echo -n " (already running)" fi echo touch /var/lock/subsys/postgres ;; stop) # Stop daemons. echo -n "Shutting down postgres Postmaster daemon: " killall -TERM postmaster 2>/dev/null killall -TERM postgres 2>/dev/null echo rm -f /var/lock/subsys/postgres ;; *) echo "Usage: postgres {start|stop}" exit 1 esac exit 0 3.9) Why does Query 32 in the regression tests take so long? This is due to a bug in regression scripts which only happens on linux boxes. There are two workarounds as far as I know (information from Tatsuo Ishii ): 1. change following in regress.sh: time postgres -texecutor -tplanner -Q bench < bench.sql to: postgres -texecutor -tplanner -Q bench < bench.sql 2. after running the test, remove a line at the very end of bench.out something like: 85.86user 114.47system 4:49.20elapsed 69%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 0maxresident)k then type: sh ./perquery < bench.out > & bench.out.perquery 3.10) Why do I get funny rounding results in some date/time arithmetic, such as select '4 hours'::timespan; returning '3 hours 59 minutes 60 seconds'? You are running the new glibc2 libraries and have a version earlier than 2.0.7. It is a math rounding problem in the library. Upgrade your library. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Andrew C.R. Martin University College London EMAIL: (Work) martin@biochem.ucl.ac.uk (Home) andrew@stagleys.demon.co.uk URL: http://www.biochem.ucl.ac.uk/~martin Tel: (Work) +44(0)171 419 3890 (Home) +44(0)1372 275775