Install self-hosted TimescaleDB from source

Install the latest PostgreSQL source

1. At the command prompt, clone the TimescaleDB GitHub repository:

   git clone https://github.com/timescale/timescaledb

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2. Change into the cloned directory:

   cd timescaledb

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3. Checkout the latest release. You can find the latest release tag on our Releases page:

   git checkout 2.17.2

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   This command produces an error that you are now in detached head state. It is expected behavior, and it occurs because you have checked out a tag, and not a branch. Continue with the steps in this procedure as normal.

Build the source

1. Bootstrap the build system:

   For installation on Microsoft Windows, you might need to add the pg_config and cmake file locations to your path. In the Windows Search tool, search for system environment variables. The path for pg_config should be C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\<version>\bin. The path for cmake is within the Visual Studio directory.

2. Build the extension:

Install TimescaleDB

Configure PostgreSQL

If you have more than one version of PostgreSQL installed, TimescaleDB can only be associated with one of them. The TimescaleDB build scripts use pg_config to find out where PostgreSQL stores its extension files, so you can use pg_config to find out which PostgreSQL installation TimescaleDB is using.

1. Locate the postgresql.conf configuration file:

   psql -d postgres -c "SHOW config_file;"

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2. Open the postgresql.conf file and update shared_preload_libraries to:

   shared_preload_libraries = 'timescaledb'

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   If you use other preloaded libraries, make sure they are comma separated.

3. Tune your PostgreSQL instance for TimescaleDB

   sudo timescaledb-tune

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   This script is included with the timescaledb-tools package when you install TimescaleDB. For more information, see configuration.

4. Restart the PostgreSQL instance:

Set the user password

1. Login to PostgreSQL as postgres

   sudo -u postgres psql

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   You are in the psql shell.

2. Set the password for postgres

   \password postgres

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   When you have set the password, type \q to exit psql.

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>"

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Add TimescaleDB to the database

CREATE EXTENSION IF NOT EXISTS timescaledb;

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Check that TimescaleDB is installed

\dx

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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)

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Press q to exit the list of extensions.