Working on a project for which I am using MySQL. As much as I love the thing it has been scaring me a little since Oracle bought them. They have pledged to keep the project open-source friendly a while back but I still worry. PostgreSQL seems like it might be a good fit for me so here are the steps I took to get it up and running from source on Ubuntu 13.04 Server.

• Make sure our required tools are installed:

  
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zlib1g-dev libreadline6-dev gcc make


• Download the latest source and extract:

  
wget ftp://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/source/v9.2.x/postgresql-9.2.x.tar.bz2
tar xjfv postgresql-9.2.x.tar.bz2


  Note
  I am using v9.2.4 for this example as it was the latest at the time of this writing. Simply replace x with your version number.

• Compile and install:

  
cd postgresql-9.2.x/
./configure
make -j y world
sudo make install-world


  Note
  Replace y with the number of processor cores you would like to use. This step generally does not take long so if you wanted to omit -j and its argument all together that would also work.

• Copy start up script:

  
sudo cp contrib/start-scripts/linux /etc/init.d/postgresql


• Remove working directory:

  
cd ../
rm -rf postgresql-9.2.x/
rm postgresql-9.2.x.tar.bz2


• Add user:

  
sudo useradd postgres


• Create data directories:

  
sudo mkdir /var/lib/postgresql/
sudo chown postgres:postgres /var/lib/postgresql/


  Create data:

  
sudo su - postgres -c "/usr/local/pgsql/bin/initdb -D /var/lib/postgresql/"


• Create configuration directory:

  
sudo mkdir /etc/postgresql/
sudo chown postgres:postgres /etc/postgresql/


  Move configuration:

  
sudo mv /var/lib/postgresql/postgresql.conf /var/lib/postgresql/pg_hba.conf /var/lib/postgresql/pg_ident.conf /etc/postgresql/


  Open postgresql.conf:

  
sudo nano /etc/postgresql/postgresql.conf


  Change postgresql.conf:

  
data_directory = '/var/lib/postgresql/'
external_pid_file = '/var/run/postgresql.pid'


  Note
  These are the bare minimum changes. You will probably want to scan the file and change it to better suit your needs.

• Open start up script:

  
sudo nano /etc/init.d/postgresql


  Change start up script:

  
PGDATA="/etc/postgresql/"
PGLOG="/var/log/postgresql.log"


  Under ## EDIT FROM HERE add:

  
PGGROUP=postgres
PGPID="/var/run/postgresql.pid"


  Above su - $PGUSER -c "$DAEMON -D '$PGDATA' &" >>$PGLOG 2>&1, under start) add:

  
touch $PGPID
chown $PGUSER:$PGGROUP $PGPID


  Under su - $PGUSER -c "$PGCTL stop -D '$PGDATA' -s -m fast", under stop) add:

  
rm $PGPID


• Make start up script executable:

  
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/postgresql
sudo update-rc.d postgresql defaults


• Start service:

  
sudo service postgresql start


• [Optional] Make commands available to all users:

  
sudo ln -s /usr/local/pgsql/bin/* /usr/local/bin/


  [Optional] Make C includes and libraries available to all users:

  
sudo ln -s /usr/local/pgsql/include/* /usr/local/include/
sudo ln -s /usr/local/pgsql/lib/* /usr/local/lib/
sudo ldconfig


  Note
  These just make life slightly easier. If you prefer you can always just call everything by their absolute paths or put them in your $PATH.

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Sources
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/installation.html
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.2/static/server-start.html