Howto: PostGIS on Vista / IIS7

[Ken Lord]

Hi Lists,

I recently upgraded to Windows Vista /  IIS7, and found very little
help on the internet regarding installing PostgreSQL / PostGIS, most
'help' consists of useless trolls and flame wars. Seems the open
source community would rather fight each other than try to play nice
with the new Microsoft OS platform.

The standard win32 installer of PostgreSQL fails on its own. There are
a some tricks needed to get through the new security measures in
Vista, but it can be done, and in the end it works fine.  Here's how:

1. Turn off the Windows Vista User Account Contral (UAC). This is done
from Users in the Control Panel.

2. Enable the Vista 'Administrator' user account. By default it is disabled.
- In the Start Menu, right click on Computer, select Manage
- In System Tools / Local Users and Groups / Users, open the
properties of the Administrator account and enable it. You will have
to assign a new password to the account.  Installation will not work
from a regular account with administrator rights, it must be this
master Administrator account.

3. Create a new standard limited user account called postgres. Give it
a password. The PostgreSQL installer can not create this account in
Vista so do it ahead of time yourself.

4. Login to the new Administrator account.

5. Install PostgreSQL from the windows msi installer file. Remember to
not install PostGIS at this point, you'll want the more upto date
version than wha tthe installer has.
- It will ask for the postgres username and password you created in step 3.
- Install as a Service
- DO NOT select to have the installer initialize a new database. It
will not work. postgres.exe protects you by not running when it has
administrator rights, if you try to have the installer initialize a
new database you will get an 'initdb failed' error message and the
installation will rollback. If you dig deeper it will tell you that
initdb can not find the postgres application even though it is present
in the bin directory.  It is there, it just won't run.

6. When the installer has finished successfully, logout of windows.
Log back in as the postgres user.

7. Open a command prompt, this is found in Accessories in the start
menue / All Programs.

8. Initialize a postgresql database.
- change to the C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.2\bin directory
- run a command something like:
initdb -D "C:\Program FIles\PostgreSQL\8.2\data" -U postgres -E UTF8

9.  You should now have a working installation of PostgreSQL.  Install
PostGIS using the appropriate installer from www.refractions.net.
Remember to get the installer that is made for your version of
PostgreSQL.

10. Disable the Administrator account and turn UAC back on.

11. Profit!!