Hello,

I've been working on optimizing the installation and usage process of MonetDB with Ubuntu.

 didn't really knew where to write this, so I thought I'll just post it here. The current head of the development tree contains all the changes described here, so this doesn't apply to the current packages yet.

The installation and usage intructions for Ubuntu/Debian will be

Install the MonetDB public key:
 $ wget --output-document=- http://monetdb.cwi.nl/downloads/MonetDB-GPG-KEY | sudo apt-key add -

Add the MonetDB repository to your apt configuration, put the following lines in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/monetdb.list:

deb http://monetdb.cwi.nl/downloads/Ubuntu/ karmic monetdb
deb-src http://monetdb.cwi.nl/downloads/Ubuntu/ karmic monetdb

To install the monetdb sql server and all the dependecies use the command:
 $ sudo apt-get install monetdb5-sql
If you want to be able to manage the monetdb databases you should add yourself to the monetdb group of the system:
 $ sudo usermod -G monetdb $USER

There is a new startup script available that will start merovingian and optionally all databases.
 $ sudo /etc/init.d/monetdb5-sql <stop|start|restart>

To use this script you need to set "STARTUP" to "yes" in /etc/default/monetdb5-sql. You can also change START_ALL_DBS to "yes" here, if you want all databases started automatically. Not that if enabled the STARTUP flag, monetdb will be automatically started during system boot en stopped during system shutdown.

For people who know how to do it, it is also possible to manually rebuild monetdb from source the debian way:
 $ apt-get source monetdb5-sql

have fun, and if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me.

 - gijs