nixpkgs/nixos/modules/services/databases/postgresql.md

PostgreSQL

Source: {file}modules/services/databases/postgresql.nix

Upstream documentation: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/

PostgreSQL is an advanced, free relational database.

Configuring

To enable PostgreSQL, add the following to your {file}configuration.nix:

services.postgresql.enable = true;
services.postgresql.package = pkgs.postgresql_11;

Note that you are required to specify the desired version of PostgreSQL (e.g. pkgs.postgresql_11). Since upgrading your PostgreSQL version requires a database dump and reload (see below), NixOS cannot provide a default value for such as the most recent release of PostgreSQL.

By default, PostgreSQL stores its databases in {file}/var/lib/postgresql/$psqlSchema. You can override this using , e.g.

services.postgresql.dataDir = "/data/postgresql";

Upgrading

::: {.note} The steps below demonstrate how to upgrade from an older version to pkgs.postgresql_13. These instructions are also applicable to other versions. :::

Major PostgreSQL upgrades require a downtime and a few imperative steps to be called. This is the case because each major version has some internal changes in the databases' state during major releases. Because of that, NixOS places the state into {file}/var/lib/postgresql/<version> where each version can be obtained like this:

$ nix-instantiate --eval -A postgresql_13.psqlSchema
"13"

For an upgrade, a script like this can be used to simplify the process:

{ config, pkgs, ... }:
{
  environment.systemPackages = [
    (let
      # XXX specify the postgresql package you'd like to upgrade to.
      # Do not forget to list the extensions you need.
      newPostgres = pkgs.postgresql_13.withPackages (pp: [
        # pp.plv8
      ]);
    in pkgs.writeScriptBin "upgrade-pg-cluster" ''
      set -eux
      # XXX it's perhaps advisable to stop all services that depend on postgresql
      systemctl stop postgresql

      export NEWDATA="/var/lib/postgresql/${newPostgres.psqlSchema}"

      export NEWBIN="${newPostgres}/bin"

      export OLDDATA="${config.services.postgresql.dataDir}"
      export OLDBIN="${config.services.postgresql.package}/bin"

      install -d -m 0700 -o postgres -g postgres "$NEWDATA"
      cd "$NEWDATA"
      sudo -u postgres $NEWBIN/initdb -D "$NEWDATA"

      sudo -u postgres $NEWBIN/pg_upgrade \
        --old-datadir "$OLDDATA" --new-datadir "$NEWDATA" \
        --old-bindir $OLDBIN --new-bindir $NEWBIN \
        "$@"
    '')
  ];
}

The upgrade process is:

1. Rebuild nixos configuration with the configuration above added to your {file}configuration.nix. Alternatively, add that into separate file and reference it in imports list.

2. Login as root (sudo su -)

3. Run upgrade-pg-cluster. It will stop old postgresql, initialize a new one and migrate the old one to the new one. You may supply arguments like --jobs 4 and --link to speedup migration process. See https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/pgupgrade.html for details.

4. Change postgresql package in NixOS configuration to the one you were upgrading to via . Rebuild NixOS. This should start new postgres using upgraded data directory and all services you stopped during the upgrade.

5. After the upgrade it's advisable to analyze the new cluster.

   • For PostgreSQL ≥ 14, use the vacuumdb command printed by the upgrades script.

   • For PostgreSQL < 14, run (as su -l postgres in the , in this example {file}/var/lib/postgresql/13):

     $ ./analyze_new_cluster.sh
     

   ::: {.warning} The next step removes the old state-directory! :::

   $ ./delete_old_cluster.sh
   

Options

A complete list of options for the PostgreSQL module may be found here.

Plugins

Plugins collection for each PostgreSQL version can be accessed with .pkgs. For example, for pkgs.postgresql_11 package, its plugin collection is accessed by pkgs.postgresql_11.pkgs:

$ nix repl '<nixpkgs>'

Loading '<nixpkgs>'...
Added 10574 variables.

nix-repl> postgresql_11.pkgs.<TAB><TAB>
postgresql_11.pkgs.cstore_fdw        postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_repack
postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_auto_failover  postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_safeupdate
postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_bigm           postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_similarity
postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_cron           postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_topn
postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_hll            postgresql_11.pkgs.pgjwt
postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_partman        postgresql_11.pkgs.pgroonga
...

To add plugins via NixOS configuration, set services.postgresql.extraPlugins:

services.postgresql.package = pkgs.postgresql_11;
services.postgresql.extraPlugins = with pkgs.postgresql_11.pkgs; [
  pg_repack
  postgis
];

You can build custom PostgreSQL-with-plugins (to be used outside of NixOS) using function .withPackages. For example, creating a custom PostgreSQL package in an overlay can look like:

self: super: {
  postgresql_custom = self.postgresql_11.withPackages (ps: [
    ps.pg_repack
    ps.postgis
  ]);
}

Here's a recipe on how to override a particular plugin through an overlay:

self: super: {
  postgresql_11 = super.postgresql_11.override { this = self.postgresql_11; } // {
    pkgs = super.postgresql_11.pkgs // {
      pg_repack = super.postgresql_11.pkgs.pg_repack.overrideAttrs (_: {
        name = "pg_repack-v20181024";
        src = self.fetchzip {
          url = "https://github.com/reorg/pg_repack/archive/923fa2f3c709a506e111cc963034bf2fd127aa00.tar.gz";
          sha256 = "17k6hq9xaax87yz79j773qyigm4fwk8z4zh5cyp6z0sxnwfqxxw5";
        };
      });
    };
  };
}

JIT (Just-In-Time compilation)

JIT-support in the PostgreSQL package is disabled by default because of the ~300MiB closure-size increase from the LLVM dependency. It can be optionally enabled in PostgreSQL with the following config option:

{
  services.postgresql.enableJIT = true;
}

This makes sure that the jit-setting is set to on and a PostgreSQL package with JIT enabled is used. Further tweaking of the JIT compiler, e.g. setting a different query cost threshold via jit_above_cost can be done manually via services.postgresql.settings.

The attribute-names of JIT-enabled PostgreSQL packages are suffixed with _jit, i.e. for each pkgs.postgresql (and pkgs.postgresql_<major>) in nixpkgs there's also a pkgs.postgresql_jit (and pkgs.postgresql_<major>_jit). Alternatively, a JIT-enabled variant can be derived from a given postgresql package via postgresql.withJIT. This is also useful if it's not clear which attribute from nixpkgs was originally used (e.g. when working with config.services.postgresql.package or if the package was modified via an overlay) since all modifications are propagated to withJIT. I.e.

with import <nixpkgs> {
  overlays = [
    (self: super: {
      postgresql = super.postgresql.overrideAttrs (_: { pname = "foobar"; });
    })
  ];
};
postgresql.withJIT.pname

evaluates to "foobar".