By default, Bytebase bundles an embedded PostgreSQL instance for storing its own metadata. The metadata is stored under the —data directory. For production setup, you should pass PG_URL environment variable to store these metadata in an external PostgreSQL database.

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Postgres version

PostgreSQL 14 or above.

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Connection string format for PG_URL

Supported format: postgresql://<<user>>:<<secret>>@<<host>>:<<port>>/<<database>> Example: postgresql://bytebase:z*3kd2@example.com:5432/meta

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Database

The connecting database must be created in advance. The database should use UTF-8 for encoding. UTF-8 encoding is mandatory across the entire system.

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User

For Cloud Database such as AWS RDS, GCP Cloud SQL, ensure that the user either owns the schema (public) and database, or has the necessary privileges to access them.
  • ALTER DATABASE database OWNER TO bytebase;
  • ALTER SCHEMA public OWNER TO bytebase;
The connecting user must have all the following database privileges:
  • SELECT
  • INSERT
  • UPDATE
  • DELETE
  • TRUNCATE
  • REFERENCES
  • TRIGGER
  • CREATE
  • CONNECT
  • TEMPORARY
  • EXECUTE
  • USAGE

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Host

If you run Bytebase inside Docker and want to connect the pg instance on the same host, then you need to use host.docker.internal.

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Docker example

This bash script demonstrates how to add an external PostgreSQL database as the metadata store when running the bytebase container.
Use host.docker.internal as the host if you connect the pg instance on the same host.
docker run --rm --init \
  -e PG_URL=postgresql://user:secret@host:port/dbname \
  --name bytebase \
  --publish 8080:8080 \
  --volume ~/.bytebase/data:/var/opt/bytebase \
  bytebase/bytebase:3.8.1

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Troubleshoot

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Cannot new server ERROR: syntax error at or near xxx

Make sure that the connecting user is either superuser or is the owner of the connecting database. See User and GitHub Issue.