I was trying to install Postgres 9.1.4 on Fedora 17 using Yum. If I do:

sudo yum install postgres-libs
sudo yum install postgres
sudo yum install postgis

All the installs appear to complete successfully (i.e., no errors), but I cannot start the Postgres daemon using:

service postgresql initdb

Like the official Postgres download guide says to do (http://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/redhat/). The error says Unknown operation initdb.

RPM tells me that it installed psql to /usr/bin/, which I confirmed. It turns out that only a few components installed correctly (psql, pg_dump, pg_configure, and a few others), but most are missing (e.g., pg_ctl and postgres).

I've tried several different configurations and had several of my coworkers (with more linux experience than me) look at it, but so far nothing has worked. Two of them have also run into similar issues installing Postgres using apt-get on Ubuntu, which makes me think the rpm isn't doing its job. It seems the only solution to build it from source, which is more robust anyway, but of course it takes longer.

I'm wondering, though, if anyone else has run into this issue and/or has successfully installed Postgres on either Fedora or Ubuntu using a package manager like yum or apt-get? Is the rpm broken?