Extended features

pgAdmin III’s functionality can be further enhanced using the adminpack contrib module for PostgreSQL. This is a library of additional functions that may be installed on your server which allows pgAdmin to offer additional features, such as:

  • The sizes on disk of tablespaces, databases, tables and indexes are displayed on the Statistics tab in the main window.
  • The Status dialogue should be able to display the server logfiles (if logging is appropriately configured).
  • Running queries from other users may be cancelled from the Status dialogue.
  • The server’s configuration files postgresql.conf and pg_hba.conf may be editted, and reloaded remotely.

The adminpack is installed and activated by default if you are running the ‘official’ pgInstaller distribution of PostgreSQL for Windows and is included as a contrib module with all versions of PostgreSQL 8.2 and above. However, if you are running any other version of PostgreSQL you will need to manually install it. To do so, simply copy the appropriate adminpack source code to the /contrib directory of your pre-configured PostgreSQL source tree. You can download the adminpacks here.

Run the following commands (substituting admin for admin81 if required):

# cd $PGSRC/contrib/admin
# make all
# make install

The module should now be built, and installed into your existing PostgreSQL installation. To be used, you must now install the module into the database you use as pgAdmin’s Maintenance DB (normally postgres, though you may wish to use a different database). To do so, locate the admin.sql or admin81.sql file installed in the previous step - normally this may be found in /usr/local/pgsql/share/contrib/ and run it against your database. You will normally need to do this as the PostgreSQL superuser:

$ psql postgres < /usr/local/pgsql/share/contrib/admin.sql

The next time you connect to the server with pgAdmin, it will detect the presence of the adminpack and offer full functionality.

Since PostgreSQL 9.1, you don’t need to use psql. You can manually add adminpack extension or make pgAdmin do the same by clicking on the “Fix It!” button of the guru hint.