Re: Installing PostgreSQL as non-root by Extracting the binaries from RPMs

Thiagarajan Lakshminarayanan <thiagu1997(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> Thanks Benjamin. Actually, we don't use Docker in our environment. We just
> use a standard RHEL OS install. Will there be any issues if I install
> PostgreSQL by extracting the RPM binaries?

What exactly is your purpose here? Is it just that you want to run a
separate data directory somewhere? You don't need a separate set of
binaries for that, just point PGDATA to where you want it and run the
server as the owner of that data directory.

(Depending on the details, you might need to teach SELinux to allow
this usage. I don't remember exactly what cues SELinux to treat a
particular process as being subject to its restrictions, but use of
the system binaries is at least part of it.)

If you want to be able to build and run a server without any root
privileges at all, you might be best off just building from source.
Maybe I'm too used to doing that, but I'm not very clear on what
you gain by extracting the result of somebody else's build -- which,
almost by definition, is not exactly what you want.

regards, tom lane