29

I'm trying to use ogr2ogr to upload a shapefile to a remote PostGres installation. When I ran this command:

celenius:~ celenius$ ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL PG:"host=255.34.00.00 user=postgres dbname=mydb password=***" Dropbox/data/roads.shp;

I got the following error message:

Unable to find driver `PostgreSQL'.
The following drivers are available:
  -> `ESRI Shapefile'
  -> `MapInfo File'
  -> `UK .NTF'
 ...
  -> `SVG'
  -> `CouchDB'
  -> `Idrisi'
  -> `ARCGEN'
  -> `SEGUKOOA'
  -> `SEGY'

(I omitted some of the drivers as they are not relevant). Is there a way that I can update ogr2ogr to include PostgreSQL? I'm using a Mac with OS 10.7.4

7 Answers 7

24

Using Homebrew you should:

brew install gdal --with-postgresql

or with older versions of gdal:

brew install gdal --with-postgres

if you have already installed gdal with brew before but without postgresql support, just

brew uninstall gdal

8
  • 2
    a small correction: brew install gdal --with-postgresql Jan 16, 2014 at 22:02
  • Will QGIS still work with the homebrew GDAL?
    – Simbamangu
    Apr 16, 2014 at 8:20
  • 1
    Well it used to work but something seems to be changed with dependencies.. see this Q&A: gis.stackexchange.com/questions/79251/… Apr 16, 2014 at 12:14
  • 2
    How would you proceed on a windows machine? Ideally using a virtualenv
    – RutgerH
    Dec 7, 2016 at 21:41
  • 2
    what is solution for windows please? Feb 21, 2017 at 16:03
5

Save yourself some pain and use the Kyngchaos packaged binaries/frameworks for OSX.GDAL-Complete is the one you are looking for.

Another option is to use HomeBrew.

5
  • AFAIK this is what I used. I didn't install it any other way.
    – djq
    Sep 12, 2012 at 21:48
  • Does this file exist: /Library/Frameworks/GDAL.framework/Versions/Current/Libraries/libpq.dylib and what does the 'which ogrinfo' command return from the terminal? Sep 12, 2012 at 23:05
  • which ogrinfo returns /usr/local/bin/ogrinfo. I installed GDAL and others from KyngChaos before installing QGis.
    – djq
    Sep 12, 2012 at 23:24
  • Does the libpq file I mentioned exist in that location? Sep 12, 2012 at 23:37
  • 1
    If libpq.dylib is not there (the PostgreSQL client library), the OGR library will not load. Sep 14, 2012 at 22:14
4

assuming you've compiled gdal from source, just include --with-pg=/path/to/pg_config when you're configuring gdal.

./configure -with-pg=/path/to/pg_config ...

./make clean

./make

./make install

EDIT: Note that pg_config should be in the same directory with your other PostgreSQL binaries, like psql, etc.. Also note, this detail from user259060's answer below: you should verify that an appropriate postgresql-server-dev version is installed (e.g. on Ubuntu use apt list --installed | grep postgresql-server-dev if not found use apt-cache search postgresql-server-dev and install the corresponding package with sudo apt-get install postgresql-server-dev).

4
  • Seems I get "PostgreSQL support: yes" in ./configure output, but trying to ogr2ogr -f PostgreSQL gives ERROR 1: Unable to find driver 'PostgreSQL'. Also, no PostgreSQL in ogrinfo --formats
    – adamczi
    Nov 14, 2018 at 0:53
  • have you run ldconfig after the installation?
    – dmci
    Nov 14, 2018 at 8:44
  • 1
    See the edit to the answer about installing postgresql-server-dev,, that should handle the error.
    – thayer
    Nov 27, 2019 at 15:44
  • I think two hyphens in front of with-pg? As in, ./configure --with-pg=/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/Versions/latest/bin/pg_config
    – Mark Egge
    Jan 23, 2020 at 3:27
3

I got this same message while on Windows.

It was complaining about the type of quotes (single vs. double) I was using around the connection string. Switching the quotes fixed the issue.

2

There is a possibility that you might see something like "PostgreSQL support: no", even though you have configured the source using "--with-pg=/path/to/pg_config"...in that case, run sudo apt-get install postgresql-server-dev-all and then retry.

1

From reading the ogr2ogr Vector formats doc, it looks like you need to install the PostgreSQL client library (libpq).

This similar question seems to give some insight into resolving a similar issue, just with Python bindings.

0

On Ubuntu 18.04 (and possibly other versions), a Postgres wrapper for OGR is available from the package postgresql-11-ogr-fdw. This is for version 11 of Postgres, as it needs to match the version of the client.

For the list the different versions of this package, for the different versions of Postgres use the following:

aptitude search postgres | grep ogr-fdw

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