History:Database Installation

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Important: This document is outdated and may soon be deleted. Please follow these instructions for setting up a MusicBrainz server instead -- the instructions below are not up to date!

If you just want the data in a database, and you don't want Apache etc., here's another method.

• It is more flexible (you can choose not to bother creating the foreign key constraints, for example)
• It has fewer prerequisites (you do not need Perl, nor any of the Perl modules, nor postgresql-devel)
• However it is a bit more "hands on" - you have to check each step for errors yourself, and the import is about 10 or so commands instead of just one.

Here's the method:

Install the base system. Install PostgreSQL (you need both the server and the client, if your system provides them separately). Install bzip2 and Subversion. Setup the MusicBrainz server (use the stable release) and download the MusicBrainz Database dumps, please make sure their revision matches. Configure postgresql the way you want it.

(Here mbrainz is the UNIX user I'm running as; musicbrainz_user is the PostgreSQL user I connect as; importtest is the database I'm setting up).

1. Create the empty database:

   mbrainz$ createdb -U postgres --owner=musicbrainz_user
   --encoding=UNICODE importtest
   CREATE DATABASE
   mbrainz$

2. Create the empty tables:

   mbrainz$ psql -U musicbrainz_user importtest
   Welcome to psql 7.4.8, the ["PostgreSQL"] interactive terminal.
   Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
          \h for help with SQL commands
          \? for help on internal slash commands
          \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
          \q to quit
   
   importtest=> \i admin/sql/CreateTables.sql
   BEGIN
   psql:admin/sql/CreateTables.sql:31: NOTICE:  CREATE TABLE will create
   implicit sequence "album_id_seq" for "serial" column "album.id"
   CREATE TABLE...COMMIT
   importtest=> \q
   mbrainz$

3. Decompress the mbdump*.tar.bz2 files:

   mbrainz$ tar jxf /path/to/mbdump.tar.bz2

   (repeat for the other files too)
4. Import each file into the database:

   mbrainz$ cd mbdump/
   mbrainz$ mkdir ../done
   mbrainz$ for t in * ; do echo `date` $t ; echo "\\copy $t from ./$t" |
   psql -U musicbrainz_user importtest && mv $t ../done/ ; done ; echo `date` Done
   Sun Jun 5 19:46:22 BST 2005 album
   ....
   Sun Jun 5 19:51:06 BST 2005 url
   Sun Jun 5 19:51:09 BST 2005 Done
   mbrainz$ cd ..

5. Add primary keys and indexes, and optimise the database:

   mbrainz$ psql -U musicbrainz_user importtest
   Welcome to psql 7.4.8, the ["PostgreSQL"] interactive terminal.
   Type:  \copyright for distribution terms
          \h for help with SQL commands
          \? for help on internal slash commands
          \g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
          \q to quit
   
   importtest=> \i admin/sql/CreatePrimaryKeys.sql
   NOTICE:  ALTER TABLE / ADD PRIMARY KEY will create implicit index "album_pkey" for table "album"
   ALTER TABLE
   ...NOTICE:  ALTER TABLE / ADD PRIMARY KEY will create implicit index "wordlist_pkey" for table "wordlist"
   ALTER TABLE
   
   importtest=> \i admin/sql/CreateIndexes.sql
   CREATE INDEX
   CREATE INDEX
   ...
   CREATE INDEX
   CREATE INDEX
   importtest=> VACUUM ANALYZE;
   importtest=> \q
   mbrainz$

That's it! If you want to, you could also choose to add the views (CreateViews.sql). In fact since we're not running CreateFKConstraints.sql, the import is fairly quick too. If you wanted it even quicker, you might want to do without some of the indexes, and just add the ones you think you need.

If you're planning on writing to the database (instead of just querying from it), you might also want to set the correct sequence values (left as an exercise for the reader) and run CreateFKConstraints.sql, CreateFunctions.sql, and CreateTriggers.sql.

~- This information on installing the MusicBrainz Database was by DaveEvans in response to DebianVMWareDatabase (see original post).

This method has been reported to work on a Macintosh.

Notes

I had this annoying bug that my PosgreSql did not have the CUBE model. You can look at my blog post to see how I fixed it: http://omricohen.me/2011/05/03/musicbrainz-installation-of-postgresql-phppgadmin-and-importing-new-data/