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Before you can use <span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span> you need
to install it, of course. It is possible that
<span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span> is already installed at your
site, either because it was included in your operating system
distribution or because the system administrator already installed
it. If that is the case, you should obtain information from the
operating system documentation or your system administrator about
how to access <span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span>.
</p><p>
If you are not sure whether <span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span>
is already available or whether you can use it for your
experimentation then you can install it yourself. Doing so is not
hard and it can be a good exercise.
<span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span> can be installed by any
unprivileged user; no superuser (<span class="systemitem">root</span>)
access is required.
</p><p>
If you are installing <span class="productname">PostgreSQL</span>
yourself, then refer to <a class="xref" href="installation.html" title="Chapter 16. Installation from Source Code">Chapter 16</a>
for instructions on installation, and return to
this guide when the installation is complete. Be sure to follow
closely the section about setting up the appropriate environment
variables.
</p><p>
If your site administrator has not set things up in the default
way, you might have some more work to do. For example, if the
database server machine is a remote machine, you will need to set
the <code class="envar">PGHOST</code> environment variable to the name of the
database server machine. The environment variable
<code class="envar">PGPORT</code> might also have to be set. The bottom line is
this: if you try to start an application program and it complains
that it cannot connect to the database, you should consult your
site administrator or, if that is you, the documentation to make
sure that your environment is properly set up. If you did not
understand the preceding paragraph then read the next section.
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