How to solve PostgreSQL pgAdmin error "Server instrumentation not installed" for adminpack?

Question

PostgreSQL 9.1 pgAdmin III on Ubuntu is giving this warning:

Guru Hint - Server instrumentation not installed

Server Instrumentation

The server lacks instrumentation functions.

pgAdmin II uses some support functions that are not available by default in all PostgreSQL versions...

The adminpack is installed and actived by default if ...

Once your extension is installed, you only need to click on the "Fix it!" button ...

How to solve this?

Answer 1

For current versions of PostgreSQL and pgAdmin, the "Guru" dialog warning has a "Fix it!" button or command. Use it.

If there's no "Fix it!" then we can use the Unix command line as follows.

This is for PostgreSQL 9.1. Older versions do it differently.

PostgresSQL docs are here:

• download adminpacks
• 8.4. adminpack functions
• 9.1. adminpack functions

Install adminpack like this:

$ sudo apt-get install postgresql-contrib

To verify we got the files, list them:

$ dpkg -L postgresql-contrib-9.1 | grep adminpack

Result:

/usr/share/postgresql/9.1/extension/adminpack.control
/usr/share/postgresql/9.1/extension/adminpack--1.0.sql
/usr/lib/postgresql/9.1/lib/adminpack.so

Alternate way to find the adminpack files:

$ sudo updatedb
$ locate adminpack

Use psql to create the extension:

$ sudo -u postgres -i
$ psql [dbname]
# CREATE EXTENSION adminpack;

(If you don't have super-user or if you need to create a per-db extension, see the comments below by @w00t to use \c dbname to connect to the database)

To verify:

# select * from pg_extension;

Result:

extname  | extowner | extnamespace | extrelocatable | extversion | extconfig | extcondition 
-----------+----------+--------------+----------------+------------+-----------+--------------
plpgsql   |       10 |           11 | f              | 1.0        |           | 
adminpack |       10 |           11 | f              | 1.0        |           | 

To load the extension into pgAdmin, see the database server icon:

• Right-click the icon then choose "Disconnent"
• Right-click the icon then choose "Connent"

To verify adminpack is working:

• Click a database icon
• On the top-right pane, click the "Statistics" tab.
• Scroll to the bottom of the Statistics.
• You now see a "Size" entry that shows the database size on disk.