Requirements

Hardware requirements

The following installation requirements assume you selected the default options during the installation process. The minimum hardware required to install and run PostgreSQL is:

• 1 GHz processor
• 2 GB of RAM
• 512 MB of HDD

Additional disk space is required for data or supporting components.

Software prerequisites

User privileges

On a Mac system, you need superuser privileges to perform a PostgreSQL installation. To perform an installation on a Windows system, you need administrator privileges.

If you're installing PostgreSQL on a Windows system that's configured with User Account Control (UAC) enabled, you must assume administrative privileges to invoke the graphical installer.

Windows-specific software requirements

Apply any Windows operating system updates before invoking the PostgreSQL installer. If the installer encounters errors, exit the installer. Make sure that your Windows version is up to date, and then restart the installer.

Mac OS X-specific software requirements

PostgreSQL installation on Mac OS X differs slightly from other platforms. The distribution is in a different format, and additional configuration might be required.

The Mac OS X installer is an app bundle, which is a set of files and directories in a prescribed format. The installer is available as a disk image (.dmg) file from the website or as an archive (.zip) from Stack Builder. To extract the installer, you can either:

• Mount the disk image and copy the installer to the desired location.
• Run it directly from the disk image.