Setting up a PostgreSQL database

This part is only required if you are going to be setting up a server (i.e., the main database). If you are setting up only the client, you can skip this step.

Installing PostgreSQL

Linux

On Debian-based systems (e.g., Ubuntu), you can install PostgreSQL with:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

For other systems, please check the original PostgreSQL website for instructions.

macOS

In your terminal, use brew to install the PostgreSQL database:

brew install postgresql

Starting the PostgreSQL database

Linux

You can start the PostgreSQL service by running:

sudo systemctl enable postgresql
sudo systemctl start postgresql

If you do not have sudo priviledges in your system, you can start the database locally by following the instructions on PostgreSQL.

macOS

To start the PostgreSQL service, run:

brew services start postgresql

Alternatively, to start PostgreSQL manually, run:

pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres start

This command may vary according to your installation. Please verify instructions after installing postgres.

Creating a new PostgreSQL database

With the PostgreSQL database installed, you can create a new database to store the jobs and results of the calculations. To do so, follow these steps:

1. In your terminal, run the following command to create a new database with the name mydb (replace by name of your choice):

createdb mydb

2. Connect to the newly created database using psql:

psql mydb

3. By default, PostgreSQL uses the current system user as the database user and does not require a password for local connections. To set a password for the database user, run the following SQL command within psql, replacing your_password with the desired password:

ALTER USER current_user WITH PASSWORD 'your_password';

After setting the password, update the PostgreSQL configuration file (pg_hba.conf) to require a password for connections. Find the line that starts with local or host, followed by the database name, user, and connection type (e.g., trust). Change the connection type to md5 or password to require a password for authentication.

4. Finally, to retrieve the current database name, user, and host, run the following SQL command within psql:

SELECT current_database(), current_user, inet_server_addr();

Now you have initialized a PostgreSQL database and retrieved the credentials (username, password, and database name) to access the database. Save these credentials, as we will use them later to access the database.