Auxiliary utilities

Greenplum Database 6 features a number of useful utilities for working with Greenplum® databases. In particular:

• gpfdist: Reads/writes data from/to files located on remote servers. For more information, see Connecting to an external file server.
• gpload: Runs jobs described in a YAML control file.
• psql: Command line interface for working with Greenplum®.

To install Greenplum Database 6 on your PC or VM running Ubuntu 22.04 or Ubuntu 20.04:

1. Download deb packages required to install Greenplum Database 6 from a Yandex Object Storage bucket using the script below:

   Ubuntu 22.04

   Ubuntu 20.04

   curl storage.yandexcloud.net/greenplum-jammy-packages/install.sh | sudo bash
   

   To view the list of downloadable deb packages, download the script file.

   curl storage.yandexcloud.net/greenplum-focal-packages/install.sh | sudo bash
   

   To view the list of downloadable deb packages, download the script file.

2. Install the packages you downloaded:

   sudo apt update && \
   sudo apt install /tmp/gp-packages/*.deb
   

3. Delete the temporary files:

   sudo rm -rf /tmp/gp-packages
   

4. Add the following environment variables to ~/.bashrc:

   echo "export GPHOME=/opt/greenplum-db-6" >> ~/.bashrc && \
   echo "source \$GPHOME/greenplum_path.sh" >> ~/.bashrc && \
   echo "export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu\${LD_LIBRARY_PATH:+:\$LD_LIBRARY_PATH}" >> ~/.bashrc && \
   source ~/.bashrc && \
   echo $GPHOME
   

   The list of packages in the install.sh file includes dependencies for the Python 2 interpreter required to work with Greenplum Database 6. Since Ubuntu 20.04 or higher uses Python 3 by default, set up switching between Python versions in the system.

5. Add python2 and python3 to the list of Python alternatives:

   sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python2 1 && \
   sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3 2
   

6. Switch the active interpreter version:

   Warning

   This may impact running other software using Python 3 in the system.

   sudo update-alternatives --config python
   

   Enter the number of the line corresponding to python2 and press Enter.

   Make sure Python 2 is the active version now:

   python --version
   

   To return to using the Python 3 interpreter later, rerun the sudo update-alternatives --config python command and select python3.

7. Test the utilities:

   gpload --version && \
   gpfdist --version && \
   psql --version
   

For guides on how to install the utilities on other operating systems visit the VMware website.