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.

   Add these, 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

You may also want to run Postgres within a docker container instead of as a system service. Running within a container provides some advantages such as storing the data seperately from the container, you do not need to run it as a system service and its easy to use different database versions or multiple databases.

1. Create a directory to store and mount the database from for persistence:

   # Create a seperate dir to store the database
   mkdir PGDATA_DIR
   # Also add this to your '~/.bashrc'
   export PGDATA_DIR=/path/to/PGDATA_DIR/
   

2. Run the container:

   docker run -d  -p 5432:5432 -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=sourcegraph \
   -e POSTGRES_USER=sourcegraph -e POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS=" --encoding=UTF8 " \
   -v $PGDATA_DIR:/var/lib/postgresql/data postgres
   

3. Ensure you can connect to the database in your container using docker exec -it <container-id> psql -U sourcegraph and enter password sourcegraph. You can use the command docker ps to view the container-id.

4. Configure database settings in your environment:

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

   Add these, 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.

5. On restarting docker, you may need to start the container again. Find the image with docker ps --all and then docker run <$containerID> to start again.

More info

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

Migrations are applied automatically.

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