Installing modules from a manually downloaded package

You might have to install a module that is correctly packaged for your system, but is not available from the official package archives. For instance, it could be the case that the module has not been accepted in the official repository yet, or you may have repackaged a bespoke version of that module with some custom tweaks, which are so specific that they will never become official. Whatever the case, you will have to follow the installation procedure for standalone packages specific to your system.

Here is an example with the Oracle compatibility module, described at http://postgres.cz/wiki/Oracle_functionality_(en):

First, we get the package (say, for PostgreSQL 8.4 on a 64-bit architecture) from http://pgfoundry.org/frs/download.php/2414/orafce-3.0.1-1.pg84.rhel5.x86_64.rpm.
Then, we install the package in the standard way:

        rpm -ivh orafce-3.0.1-1.pg84.rhel5.x86_64.rpm

If all the dependencies are met, we are done.

I mentioned dependencies because that's one more potential problem when installing packages that are not officially part of the installed distribution; you can no longer assume that all software version numbers have been tested, all requirements are available, and there are no conflicts. If you get error messages that indicate problems in these areas, you may have to solve them yourself, by manually installing missing packages and/or uninstalling conflicting packages.