Re: How do I correctly relocate PostGIS control files?

[Carlo Zancanaro]

Hi Gary,

On Tue, Nov 10 2020, Gary Johnson wrote:
> It's been a week since my original post requesting assistance 
> with getting Postgresql and PostGIS to work together correctly, 
> but unfortunately I still haven't received any help with this 
> issue.
> ...
> Does anyone know how this code works or how to fix this issue?

I didn't respond initially because I don't have any specialist 
knowledge about this. I had some free time today, so I did a bit 
of an investigation and I think I've figured out what's gone wrong 
for you here.

In your original email you gave this definition for postgresql-13:

   (define-public postgresql-13
     (package
      (inherit postgresql)
      (name "postgresql")
      (version "13.0")
      (source (origin
               (method url-fetch)
               (uri (string-append 
               "https://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/source/v";
                                   version "/postgresql-" version 
                                   ".tar.bz2"))
               (sha256
                (base32
                 "15i2b7m9a9430idqdgvrcyx66cpxz0v2d81nfqcm8ss3inz51rw0"))))))

However, this is missing one important line from the original 
postgresql definition, which applies a patch to the source:

   (patches (search-patches 
   "postgresql-disable-resolve_symlinks.patch"))

This patch changes how Postgres treats symlinks, which Guix uses 
extensively. If we add this patch the definition of postgresql-13 
we should get:

   (define-public postgresql-13
     (package
      (inherit postgresql)
      (name "postgresql")
      (version "13.0")
      (source (origin
               (method url-fetch)
               (uri (string-append 
               "https://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/source/v";
                                   version "/postgresql-" version 
                                   ".tar.bz2"))
               (sha256
                (base32
                 "15i2b7m9a9430idqdgvrcyx66cpxz0v2d81nfqcm8ss3inz51rw0"))
               (patches (search-patches 
               "postgresql-disable-resolve_symlinks.patch"))))))

I put this into a system definition (a bit hacky, but attached) 
and built it using "guix system vm helping-gary.scm". Logging into 
the system as root I was able to run this successfully:

   sudo -u postgres psql -c 'create extension postgis'

I hope that helps!

Carlo

helping-gary.scm
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