How to install PostGIS 1.5 on Ubuntu 11.10 (oneiric) from source

Prerequisites

Several components are needed, which can either be built from source or installed from pre-built packages, as shown below.

Install prerequisite packages using:

sudo apt-get install build-essential postgresql-9.1 postgresql-server-dev-9.1 libxml2-dev libgeos-dev proj

Optional packages for testing PostGIS:

sudo apt-get install libcunit1-dev

Optional packages for building documentation:

sudo apt-get install xsltproc docbook-xsl imagemagick

(for building PDF documentation, add dblatex, but expect a large download)

Build

Download, configure, build and install:

wget http://postgis.refractions.net/download/postgis-1.5.6.tar.gz
tar xfvz postgis-1.5.6.tar.gz
cd postgis-1.5.6
./configure
make
sudo make install

Documentation/comments

From the postgis-1.5.6 directory:

cd doc
make
sudo make install
sudo make comments-install

Template

Complete a post-install by creating a template, which can be re-used for creating multiple spatially-enabled databases. Or if you just want to make one spatially enabled database, you can modify the commands for your needs.

sudo -u postgres createdb template_postgis
sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -c "UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate=true WHERE datname='template_postgis'"
sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.1/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.1/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql
sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -f /usr/share/postgresql/9.1/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis_comments.sql

See also

• ​https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PostgreSQL