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1.6.2 Environment Variables

If you installed into ‘/usr/local/pgsql’ or some other location that is not searched for programs by default, you should add ‘/usr/local/pgsql/bin’ (or whatever you set --bindir to in section 1.5 Installation Procedure) into your PATH. Strictly speaking, this is not necessary, but it will make the use of PostgreSQL much more convenient.

To do this, add the following to your shell start-up file, such as ‘~/.bash_profile’ (or ‘/etc/profile’, if you want it to affect every user):

PATH=/usr/local/pgsql/bin:$PATH
export PATH

If you are using csh or tcsh, then use this command:

set path = ( /usr/local/pgsql/bin $path )

To enable your system to find the man documentation, you need to add lines like the following to a shell start-up file unless you installed into a location that is searched by default.

MANPATH=/usr/local/pgsql/man:$MANPATH
export MANPATH

The environment variables PGHOST and PGPORT specify to client applications the host and port of the database server, overriding the compiled-in defaults. If you are going to run client applications remotely then it is convenient if every user that plans to use the database sets PGHOST. This is not required, however: the settings can be communicated via command line options to most client programs.