quickstart_2_initialize_database.md

Quickstart step 2: Initialize your database

Without Docker

You need a fresh Postgres database and a database user that has full ownership of that database.

1. Create a database for the current Unix user

   # For Linux users, first access the postgres user shell
   sudo su - postgres
   # For Mac OS users
   sudo su - _postgres
   

   createdb
   

2. Create the Sourcegraph user and password

   createuser --superuser sourcegraph
   psql -c "ALTER USER sourcegraph WITH PASSWORD 'sourcegraph';"
   

3. Create the Sourcegraph database

   createdb --owner=sourcegraph --encoding=UTF8 --template=template0 sourcegraph
   

4. Configure database settings in your environment

   The Sourcegraph server reads PostgreSQL connection configuration from the PG* environment variables.

   The startup script sets default values that work with the setup described here, but if you are using different values you can overwrite them, for example, in your ~/.bashrc:

   export PGPORT=5432
   export PGHOST=localhost
   export PGUSER=sourcegraph
   export PGPASSWORD=sourcegraph
   export PGDATABASE=sourcegraph
   export PGSSLMODE=disable
   

   You can also use a tool like envdir or a .dotenv file to source these env vars on demand when you start the server.

With Docker

The Sourcegraph server reads PostgreSQL connection configuration from the PG* environment variables.

The development server startup script as well as the docker compose file provide default settings, so it will work out of the box.

You can overwrite these settings e.g. via your ~/.bashrc:

export PGUSER=sourcegraph
export PGPASSWORD=sourcegraph
export PGDATABASE=sourcegraph

You can also use the PGDATA_DIR environment variable to specify a local folder (instead of a volume) to store the database files. See the dev/redis-postgres.yml file for more details.

More info

For more information about data storage, read our full PostgreSQL page.

Migrations are applied automatically.

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