Setting up a PostgreSQL Database on Linux for JIRA

The latest official documentation on configuring JIRA with PostgreSQL can be found in the Connecting JIRA to PostgreSQL guide.

This is a step-by-step supplement guide for setting up your PostgreSQL database for JIRA on Ubuntu. However, the various procedures described below can be adapted (or may be applicable) to other Linux distributions too.

Set Up a PostgreSQL User

PostgreSQL is very easy to set up on Ubuntu:

user:~$ sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.2 postgresql-client-8.2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
....
 * Starting PostgreSQL 8.2 database server             [ OK ]

Now we create a jira PostgreSQL user for the user account that runs JIRA to connect as:

user:~$ sudo su - postgres
postgres:~$ createuser -P jira
Enter password for new role:
Enter it again:
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) n
Shall the new role be allowed to create databases? (y/n) y
Shall the new role be allowed to create more new roles? (y/n) n
CREATE ROLE

Set Up a PostgreSQL user

We can now connect as our jira user and create a database.

postgres:~$ logout
user:~$ sudo su - jira
jira:~$ createdb jiradb
CREATE DATABASE

Start JIRA

Run the Setup Wizard

Point a browser at http://localhost:8080/, and set up JIRA as described in the Setup Wizard.