Install TimescaleDB on Linux

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TimescaleDB is a PostgreSQL extension for time series and demanding workloads that ingest and query high volumes of data.

This section shows you how to:

Install and configure TimescaleDB on PostgreSQL - set up a self-hosted PostgreSQL instance to efficiently run TimescaleDB.
Add the TimescaleDB extension to your database - enable TimescaleDB features and performance improvements on a database.

Development and production environments

The following instructions are for development and testing installations. For a production environment, we strongly recommend that you implement the following, many of which you can achieve using PostgreSQL tooling.

Incremental backup and database snapshots, with efficient point-in-time recovery.
High availability replication, ideally with nodes across multiple availability zones.
Automatic failure detection with fast restarts, for both non-replicated and replicated deployments.
Asynchronous replicas for scaling reads when needed.
Connection poolers for scaling client connections.
Zero-down-time minor version and extension upgrades.
Forking workflows for major version upgrades and other feature testing.
Monitoring and observability.

Deploying for production? With a Timescale Cloud service we tune your database for performance and handle scalability, high availability, backups and management so you can relax.

Try for free

Install and configure TimescaleDB on PostgreSQL

This section shows you how to install the latest version of PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB on a supported platform using the packages supplied by Timescale.

Warning

If you have previously installed PostgreSQL without a package manager, you may encounter errors following these install instructions. Best practice is to fully remove any existing PostgreSQL installations before you begin.

To keep your current PostgreSQL installation, Install from source.

Job jobbed, you have installed PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB.

Add the TimescaleDB extension to your database

For improved performance, you enable TimescaleDB on each database on your self-hosted PostgreSQL instance. This section shows you how to enable TimescaleDB for a new database in PostgreSQL using psql from the command line.

Connect to a database on your PostgreSQL instance
In PostgreSQL, the default user and database are both postgres. To use a different database, set <database-name> to the name of that database:
```
psql -d "postgres://<username>:<password>@<host>:<port>/<database-name>"
```

Add TimescaleDB to the database


CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS timescaledb;

Check that TimescaleDB is installed

\dx

You see the list of installed extensions:


List of installed extensions
Name     | Version |   Schema   |                                      Description                                      
-------------+---------+------------+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
plpgsql     | 1.0     | pg_catalog | PL/pgSQL procedural language
timescaledb | 2.17.2  | public     | Enables scalable inserts and complex queries for time-series data (Community Edition)

Press q to exit the list of extensions.

And that is it! You have TimescaleDB running on a database on a self-hosted instance of PostgreSQL.

Where to next

What next? Try the main features offered by Timescale, see the use case tutorials, interact with the data in your Timescale Cloud service using your favorite programming language, integrate your Timescale Cloud service with a range of third-party tools, plain old Use Timescale, or dive into the API.

Supported platforms

TimescaleDB is supported on the following platforms:

Debian	Ubuntu	Red Hat Enterprise	Fedora	Rocky Linux
Debian 10 Buster	Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Fedora 33	Rocky Linux 8
Debian 11 Bullseye	Ubuntu 22.04 LTS Jammy Jellyfish	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Fedora 34	Rocky Linux 9
Debian 12 Bookworm	Ubuntu 23.04 Lunar Lobster	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9	Fedora 35
	Ubuntu 24.04 LTS Noble Numbat