raq4 and postgres woes

melody

I wasn't sure if this should be in the install forum... please don't flame me if it was!

I'm running a Raq4 and want to use postgres with it. I use postgres locally on my machine all the time, ( I installed php, apache and postgres as a package on it) and it's fine. However, when I try running any pg functions on the Raq, it says they're undefined. I checked phpinfo and it says php was built with the '--with-pgsql=shared' flag set. I know postgres is installed too. Why isn't it working?

Any suggestions would be great...

Thanks
Melody

Sxooter

look for an rpm on your install CD (or whereever you get rpms for a raq, not sure really) that's of the form php-pgsql-x.y.z-a.rpm where xyz-a are version numbers and install that.
You may also need to edit your php.ini file to activate it, but i'm not sure.

melody

Thanks for the reply.

I have other users on my Raq... If I try installing the rpm and it barfs all over the place I'll have a lot of unhappy users... is there anything I can backup first or any precautions I can take?

You help is much appreciated.
Thanks

Melody

Sxooter

You must be a former windows user. 🙂

Installing an rpm like php-pgsql is quite safe. It will either install and work or not. And if it doesn't work right (i.e. apache starts crashing for some strange reason) you can uninstall an rpm with the -e switch (-e for erase.)

Unlike windows, RPM package management in Linux is quite robust. There's probably a nice GUI RPM tool on a raq as well, so it's even easier to handle than the old days of command line everything.

melody

You must be a former windows user

Yup. I'm not proud of it. Incidentally, i'm now using Vector Linux. it's beautiful. 😃

Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately I've now found out that such a package doesn't exist for a Raq4. Guess I'll just have to figure some other way around it...

Presumably a straight compile from source can't be erased in the same way? Can it? Like u said, a former windows user... I've always used vectors tools to control installation and deletes before...

Thanks for the help
Melody

Sxooter

Well, then you're faced with the somewhat daunting task of installing from source, or, worse, creating your own RPMs. While I've made my own RPMs in RedHat, I've never touched a Raq, so I don't know.

Is vector linux the replacement for the linux that came on raqs from the factory?

And yes, source installs aren't quite as easy to back out, but they've always worked well in the past for me.

You'll need to build php by hand, but if the postgresql rpms include the headers, at least you won't have to rebuild postgresql by hand.

csn

Actually, I don't think raq's have rpm's. 😉 It's been quite a while since I've dealt with raq's - raq4's are getting pretty antiquated. Cobalt was acquired by Sun, and I think all the packages are buried deep within Sun's site.

Compiling PHP from source is pretty easy, once you figure out what extensions you need, and assuming you're all set up with gcc, etc.

Sxooter

Unfortunately, most Raqs are running pretty ancient versions of things like libs and compilers, so it might be more than a little difficult to get php compiled and running on one nowadays.

I've always figured migration to a cheap $1000 linux box might be a nice way to go.