Importing modules into postgres

Question

I'm trying to import several modules that come bundled with 8.4.1 postgres, and all the commands to do so (such as contrib.import etc) do not work or cannot be found. Please help me.

Answer 1

To install PostgreSQL contrib modules on Ubuntu or Kubuntu (or similar Linux distributions):

1. Install the contrib package: sudo apt-get install postgresql-contrib
2. Restart the database: sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql-8.4 restart
3. Change to the database owner account (e.g., postgres).
4. Change to the contrib modules' directory: /usr/share/postgresql/8.4/contrib/

5. Use ls to see a list of the following modules:

   adminpack               autoinc
   btree_gin               btree_gist
   chkpass                 citext
   cube                    dblink
   dict_int                dict_xsyn
   earthdistance           fuzzystrmatch
   hstore                  insert_username
   int_aggregate           isn
   lo                      ltree
   moddatetime             pageinspect
   pg_buffercache          pgcrypto
   pg_freespacemap         pgrowlocks
   pg_stat_statements      pgstattuple
   pg_trgm                 pgxml
   refint                  seg
   sslinfo                 tablefunc
   test_parser             timetravel
   tsearch2                uuid-ossp
   

6. Load the SQL files using: psql -U user_name -d database_name -f module_name.sql

For example, if your administrative user was named postgres and your database was named storage and the module you wanted was cube, you would type:

psql -U postgres -d storage -f cube.sql

Hope it helps!

Answer 2

postgres=# select contrib.import('earthdistance'); ERROR: schema "contrib" does not exist

postgres=# select import('earthdistance.sql'); ERROR: function import(unknown) does not exist LINE 1: select import('earthdistance.sql'); ^

The above are the only import commands I have found for postgresql. Thanks for the help depesz but I am running postgresql through a windows terminal so it goes straight into postgresql and the commands do not work.