http://nickcharlton.net/post/postgres-on-lion

$ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres/ -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start

$ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres/ stop -s -m fast

Step 1 (install the stuff)

 $ sudo apt-get install postgresql-9.1 postgresql-server-dev-9.1 
 postgresql-9.1-postgis 
 $ sudo apt-get install binutils gdal-bin python-psycopg2 python-setuptools 

Step 2 (create templates) 

create a POSTGIS template (from which your databases will be derived)

$ POSTGIS_SQL_PATH=`pg_config --sharedir`/contrib/postgis-1.5 

# Creating the template spatial database. 

$ sudo -u postgres createdb -E UTF8 template_postgis

$ sudo emacs -nw /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf 

 $ sudo service postgresql restart  

Add language support for PLPGSQL

 $ sudo -u postgres createlang -d template_postgis plpgsql 

Allows non-superusers the ability to create from this template

$ sudo -u postgres psql -d postgres -c 
 "UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate='true' WHERE datname='template_postgis';" 

Load the PostGIS SQL routines

 $ sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -f 
$POSTGIS_SQL_PATH/postgis.sql 
 $sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -f 
$POSTGIS_SQL_PATH/spatial_ref_sys.sql 

(note that the dollar sign above after -f is to signify the variable $POSTGIS_SQL_PATH, it should all be a single line from “$sudo -u …. to … .sql”)

******** You may get an error here ***********
the Error is that /postgis.sql cannot be found. So I tried:

 $ sudo updatedb 
 $ locate "postgis.sql" # which gave me the answer: 
 /usr/share/postgresql/9.1/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
 /usr/share/postgresql/9.1/contrib/postgis-1.5/uninstall_postgis.sql

so I changed those two commands to commands to,

$ sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -f 
/usr/share/postgresql/9.1/contrib/postgis-1.5/postgis.sql
 $ sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -f 
/usr/share/postgresql/9.1/contrib/postgis-1.5/spatial_ref_sys.sql

Some user rights for users to be able to alter spatial tables

 $ sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -c 
 "GRANT ALL ON geometry_columns TO PUBLIC;"
 $ sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -c 
 "GRANT ALL ON geography_columns TO PUBLIC;"
 $ sudo -u postgres psql -d template_postgis -c 
 "GRANT ALL ON spatial_ref_sys TO PUBLIC;"

So now we are ready to create our own local database. Let’s call it test_db with user test_admin

 sudo -u postgres createuser --createdb test_admin
 shall the new role be a superuser? Y
 sudo -u postgres createdb -T template_postgis -O test_admin test_db
 sudo -u postgres psql test_db -c "ALTER USER test_admin with password 'random-obscure-password'"; 

I mostly followed the steps from ChicagoDjango

together with countless hours of debugging for those two simple errors! :-/ …

So I hope it’s of use to you all.