Installation

Rocky Linux

We can download the Rocky Linux distruction from their web site

https://rockylinux.org/download

The installation and setup is beyond the scope of this guide.

Ideally, you would use dedicated user accounts to run PostgreSQL and pgagroal

useradd postgres
usermod -a -G wheel postgres
useradd pgagroal
usermod -a -G wheel pgagroal

Add a configuration directory for pgagroal

mkdir /etc/pgagroal
chown -R pgagroal:pgagroal /etc/pgagroal

and lets open the ports in the firewall that we will need

firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=2345/tcp
firewall-cmd --permanent --zone=public --add-port=2346/tcp

PostgreSQL

We will install PostgreSQL 18 from the official YUM repository with the community binaries,

x86_64

dnf -qy module disable postgresql
dnf install -y https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-10-x86_64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm

aarch64

dnf -qy module disable postgresql
dnf install -y https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/reporpms/EL-10-aarch64/pgdg-redhat-repo-latest.noarch.rpm

and do the install via

dnf install -y postgresql18 postgresql18-server postgresql18-contrib

First, we will update ~/.bashrc with

cat >> ~/.bashrc
export PGHOST=/tmp
export PATH=/usr/pgsql-18/bin/:$PATH

then Ctrl-d to save, and

source ~/.bashrc

to reload the Bash environment.

Then we can do the PostgreSQL initialization

mkdir DB
initdb -k DB

and update configuration - for a 8 GB memory machine.

postgresql.conf

listen_addresses = '*'
port = 5432
max_connections = 100
unix_socket_directories = '/tmp'
password_encryption = scram-sha-256
shared_buffers = 2GB
huge_pages = try
max_prepared_transactions = 100
work_mem = 16MB
dynamic_shared_memory_type = posix
wal_level = replica
wal_log_hints = on
max_wal_size = 16GB
min_wal_size = 2GB
log_destination = 'stderr'
logging_collector = on
log_directory = 'log'
log_filename = 'postgresql.log'
log_rotation_age = 0
log_rotation_size = 0
log_truncate_on_rotation = on
log_line_prefix = '%p [%m] [%x] '
log_timezone = UTC
datestyle = 'iso, mdy'
timezone = UTC
lc_messages = 'en_US.UTF-8'
lc_monetary = 'en_US.UTF-8'
lc_numeric = 'en_US.UTF-8'
lc_time = 'en_US.UTF-8'
summarize_wal = on
wal_summary_keep_time = '0'

Please, check with other sources in order to create a setup for your local setup.

Now, we are ready to start PostgreSQL

pg_ctl -D DB -l /tmp/ start

pgagroal

We will install pgagroal from the official YUM repository as well,

dnf install -y pgagroal

First, we will need to create a master security key for the pgagroal installation, by

pgagroal-admin -g master-key

By default, this will ask for a key interactively. Alternatively, a key can be provided using either the --password command line argument, or the PGAGROAL_PASSWORD environment variable. Note that passing the key using the command line might not be secure.

Then we will create the configuration for pgagroal,

cat > /etc/pgagroal/pgagroal.conf
[pgagroal]
host = *
port = 2345

metrics = 2346

log_type = file
log_level = info
log_path = /tmp/pgagroal.log

max_connections = 100
idle_timeout = 600
validation = off
unix_socket_dir = /tmp/

[primary]
host = localhost
port = 5432

and end with a Ctrl-d to save the file.

Start pgagroal now, by

pgagroal -d