Re: Preferred Installation/Data Directories

Rich Shepard <rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com> writes:
> Seems to me that the preferred filesystem for postgres has varied over the
> years from /var/lib/ to /usr/local/ and back again.

No, it hasn't. The PG code itself doesn't make any assumptions about
the location of $PGDATA AFAIR, but there are a large number of
packagings that assume specific places like /var/lib/pgsql/. If you've
changed platforms or changed between installing from source and
installing a prebuilt package, you might notice some variability.
In any case you're certainly welcome to put $PGDATA anywhere you want.

[ Thinks for a bit ... ] Note that "packaging" might extend further
than meets the eye. For instance, if you want to move $PGDATA on a
recent Red Hat system, you need to tweak not only the initscript but
the SELinux policy, which by default will constrain the postmaster to
write only under /var/lib/pgsql/.

regards, tom lane