The creation and initialization of a database to the point when it's ready to store messages is normally done using the manitou-mgr command, although it can also be done manually with the SQL scripts from the source code archive.

To create the database from scratch, manitou-mgr has to connect as a database superuser. Assuming that the PostgreSQL server has the default security configuration (see pg_hba.conf file), running manitou-mgr as shown below from the local postgres Unix account on the server is the simplest option.

postgres:~$ manitou-mgr --create-database
Database user manitou created.
Database manitou created.
Creating tables
Creating sequences
Creating functions
Creating triggers
Database manitou successfully created.

Non default behavior can be achieved using options --db-name, --db-user, --db-super-user, --db-super-password, --db-host, --db--port to the --create-database command. The command manitou-mgr --help gives usage information.

Once the database is created, the db_connect_string entry in the manitou-mdx configuration file must be set up to point to the database, with optionally the user, password, host, port and other information needed to connect.

When upgrading to a new version of Manitou-Mail, a database schema upgrade should be performed after having stopped of the old version of manitou-mdx and before having started the new version:

postgres:~$ manitou-mgr --upgrade-schema
Upgrading from 0.9.12 to 1.0.0
Schema upgrade successful