Installing PostgreSQL on FreeBSD

You can install postgresql from the ports:

cd /usr/ports/database/postgresql84-server
make install clean

The master user for the database on FreeBSD, in contrast to the master user on most Linux distributions, is called pgsql. Hence, you have to initialize the database using this user:

su - pgsql

Run

initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
postmaster -D /usr/local/pgsql/data

to finish the initialization. In order to start postgres on boot, you need to add


postgresql_enbale="YES"
postgresql_data="/usr/local/pgsql/data


into your /etc/rc.conf.