Install PostgreSQL 8.4 and PostGIS 1.4.0 in Ubuntu 9.0.4

I am a big fan of the new PostGIS 1.4.0 (and also of Paul Ramsey) . I always have troubles installing PostGIS in ubuntu so I thought that this time I was gonna document it and blog it here. So this is just a log of the steps required to install it on an EC2 instance with Ubuntu 9.04. I hope it can be useful for someone else.

Just for the record. The EC2 instance I used was ami-ccf615 from http://alestic.com .


Once login (totally fresh).

apt-get update
apt-get install vim

#The sources are still not available on the regular package servers... edit the sources 
vim /etc/apt/sources.list
  add deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/pitti/postgresql/ubuntu jaunty main
          deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/pitti/postgresql/ubuntu jaunty main

sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com --recv-keys 8683D8A2
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.4

#This changes the port from 5433 to 5432
sudo sed -i.bak -e 's/port = 5433/port = 5432/' /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/postgresql.conf

sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 stop
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 start
apt-get install postgresql-server-dev-8.4 libpq-dev
apt-get install libgeos-dev
wget http://postgis.refractions.net/download/postgis-1.4.0.tar.gz
apt-get install proj
tar xvfz postgis-1.4.0.tar.gz
cd postgis-1.4.0
./configure
make
make install
sudo su postgres

#change the postgres password to "atlas" so that you can later login
psql -c"ALTER user postgres WITH PASSWORD 'atlas'"

createdb geodb    (with password atlas)
createlang -dgeodb plpgsql
psql -dgeodb -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/postgis.sql
psql -dgeodb -f /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/spatial_ref_sys.sql
psql -dgeodb -c"select postgis_lib_version();"

#This should return 1.4.0

exit

Good Luck!