Installing Postgres9.0 and PostGIS on CentOS

So, I work with spatial (GIS) data quite often. Since quite often I have to rebuild databases I am going to write down the steps I take to install PostGIS + Postgresql. The first step on CentOS is to configure the repositories:

1. Use http://www.pgrpms.org/ for postgresql. As root, go to /etc/yum.repo.d/ and create a file called pgrpms9.repo and add the following lines:

[pgdg90]
name=PostgreSQL 9.0 $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=http://yum.pgrpms.org/9.0/redhat/rhel-$releasever-$basearch
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-PGDG
[pgdg90-source]
name=PostgreSQL 9.0 $releasever - $basearch - Source
failovermethod=priority
baseurl=http://yum.pgrpms.org/srpms/9.0/redhat/rhel-$releasever-$basearch
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-PGDG

2. Add EPEL repository by doing the following from shell

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/epel/5/i386/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm'

3. Update CentOS base repository to remove postgresql being downloaded by adding “exclude=postgresql*” to the end of the repo Centos-Base.repo

4. Install PostGRES server, PostGIS, GEOS and PROJ on x86_64 using yum from shell prompt as given the command below:

   $ yum install postgresql90-contrib.x86_64 postgresql90-docs.x86_64  postgresql90-devel.x86_64 postgis90 postgis90-utils postgis90-docs postgresql90-server.x86_64 proj-devel.x86_64 geos-devel.x86_64

5. Install PostGRES server, PostGIS, GEOS and PROJ on i386 linux using yum from shell prompt as given the command below:

$ yum install postgresql90-contrib postgresql90-docs  postgresql90-devel postgis90 postgis90-utils postgis90-docs postgresql90-server proj-devel geos-devel

6. Initialize and Start Postgres Database server

$ /sbin/service postgresql-9.0 initdb
$ /sbin/service postgresql-9.0 start

7. Create PostGIS template database

$ su - postgres
$ createdb -E UTF8 -T template0 postgis_template
$ createlang -d postgis_template plpgsql
$ psql -d postgis_template -f  /usr/pgsql-9.0/share/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
$ psql -d postgis_template -f  /usr/pgsql-9.0/share/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql
$ psql -d postgis_template -c "GRANT ALL ON geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;"
$ psql -d postgis_template -c "GRANT ALL ON geography_columns TO PUBLIC;"
$ psql -d postgis_template -c "GRANT ALL ON spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;"
$ psql -d postgis_template -c "VACUUM FULL;"
$ psql -d postgis_template -c "VACUUM FREEZE;"
$ psql -d postgres -c "UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate='true' WHERE datname='postgis_template';"
$ psql -d postgres -c "UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn='false' WHERE datname='postgis_template';"

8. Create PostGRES database using postgis_template template database

$ su - postgres
$ psql -Upostgres

$ create role owner with createdb createrole login;
$ create database db with owner=owner template=postgis_template;

AND you are set to go.