Re: BUG #3297: psql won't open

On May 22, 2007, at 14:57 , ;John D. Tiedeman wrote:

>
> The following bug has been logged online:
>
> Bug reference:      3297
> Logged by:          ;John D. Tiedeman
> Email address:      jdtiede@bellsouth.net
> PostgreSQL version: 8.4
> Operating system:   Linux (Kubuntu 7.4)
> Description:        psql won't open
> Details:
>
> Errer message says at least one client package must be installed. I
> had been
> using it for several days when I tried to use pg_dump. I haven't
> been able
> to find the dump output but perhaps I haven't looked in the right
> place. The
> Find facility of the OS doesn't working normally when the user is
> postgres.
>
> When I do
>      su - postgres
>      psql <any db>
> I get the above error message. I tried removing and reinstalling
> the client
> package and still get the error message.

Probably you need to install one of "postgresql-client-X.X" packages,
where X.X is the version. Ubuntu packages the server and client
components separately, and it sounds as if you have only the server.
Without knowing exactly what you did, and exactly what happened, it's
hard to say.

You can do that by running "sudo apt-get install PACKAGENAME" or by
running one of the graphical package managers. As I recall, there is
a menu item named "Add/Remove Programs" in the programs menu at the
extreme upper left of the screen. The Ubuntu documentation has more
detail, somewhere.

pg_dump outputs to stdout by default. This means that when it runs
successfully, you will see the dump on the terminal but it won't be
saved in to a file unless you direct it to do otherwise. Probably you
want to use the -f option to direct pg_dump to save the output to a
file. You can run "man pg_dump" to get more documentation on that
option, or view the man page online at <http://www.postgresql.org/
docs/8.2/interactive/app-pgdump.html>