How to Install PostGIS on Ubuntu 20.04

In this tutorial, I will guide you on how to install PostGIS on Ubuntu 20.04. In the previous article, I have shown how to install PostGIS on Ubuntu 18.04. I want to update the article with the new version of Ubuntu. When this article is being written, the new PostgreSQL Server version 12 is available in the Ubuntu repository. So, we are going to use that version here.

PostGIS is a spatial database that can be used to store the GIS dataset inside PostgreSQL Server. PostGIS works very well on QGIS and some other GIS software such as MapInfo and ArcGIS. So in this article, I also include some short videos showing the command lines in progress. I hope this will help you who just started to use Ubuntu or PostgreSQL.

Steps to Install PostGIS on Ubuntu 20.04

Step 1. Install PostgreSQL Server

Open Ubuntu Terminal and then update your system

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Next, install PostgreSQL Server

sudo apt install postgresql

Output:

After install, execute this command to start PostgreSQL service

pg_ctlcluster 12 main start

And then check the PostgreSQL server status

sudo systemctl status postgresql

Step 2. Install PostGIS

Now we are going to install PostGIS on Ubuntu 20.04. Use this command to install it.

sudo apt install postgis

Watch the entire installation process below.

At this step, we have successfully installed PostGIS extension on the PostgreSQL server. Now, we need to create a new database and then enable the PostGIS extension on that database. If you have the database already, we can also enable the PostGIS on the existing database.

Create a new database

To create a new PostgreSQL database from the command line, we need to connect/login to the PostgreSQL server as postgres user first.

sudo -i -u postgres

Now we are in the postgres user. Execute this command to create a new database called “gis_database”.

createdb gis_database;

Watch the entire new database creation process below.

Enable PostGIS extension on the database

Now we have a new database and let’s enable the postgis extension on this new database.

Step 3. Enable Remote Access

By default, we can only access the PostgreSQL database from localhost. We need to enable remote access to the server so the network users can access the PostgreSQL server from the network. We need to modify two things.

Edit the pg_hba.conf

In my case, the file pg_hba.conf is located under /etc/postgresql/12/main. We can edit using nano or any text editor you prefer.

sudo nano /etc/postgresql/12/main/pg_hba.conf

Add the following line to the end of the file

host  all  all  0.0.0.0/0  md5

Edit postgresql.conf

Next, we need to edit the file postgresql.conf. It’s in the same folder as pg_hba.conf.

sudo nano /etc/postgresql/12/main/postgresql.conf

Find the line that says

#listen_addresses = 'localhost'

Change it to

listen_addresses = '*'

Thank you. I hope you enjoy it and see you next time. For more information, please visit the official website of PostgreSQL below.

https://www.postgresql.org/