Installing postgresql 9.6 on RHEL/CentOS 7 without repository

Postgres has released the final version of postgresql 9.6 on November 2021, and this version is no longer supported by postgresql.org. So installing out of support software in production server is not recommended.

But for anyone who still wanted postgresql 9.6 on CentOS 7, here is how you can install it (the official pgrepo do not allow any installation of postgresql version less than 10)

1. Using your browser, browse to the postgresql download page at https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/

2. Search for your version and architecture, in my case I needed version 9.6 for a centos 7 x86_64 machine. So my url would be https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/9.6/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/

3. Download the necessary package, usually 1 package for the client, 1 package for the libs and one for the client (optional).

wget -c https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/9.6/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/

postgresql96-libs-9.6.22-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.rpm 

wget -c https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/9.6/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/postgresql96-libs-9.6.22-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.rpm 

wget -c https://download.postgresql.org/pub/repos/yum/9.6/redhat/rhel-7-x86_64/postgresql96-server-9.6.22-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.rpm

4. Install the packages. If any additional packages are needed, just download it from the repo url above.

sudo yum install ./postgresql96-libs-9.6.22-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.rpm ./postgresql96-libs-9.6.22-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.rpm ./postgresql96-server-9.6.22-1PGDG.rhel7.x86_64.rpm

5.  Initialize the database

sudo /usr/pgsql-9.6/bin/postgresql96-setup initdb

6. Enable the database startup on boot, and start the service

sudo systemctl enable --now postgresql-9.6