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Question

I'm working with the PADUS OBI shape file, not that that's probably important.

I'm running the shape file through shp2pgsql using the default options, as in:

shp2pgsql PADUS_1_1_CBI_Edition.shp > PADUS.sql

Then I'm trying to import the SQL into Postgres by doing:

psql -d padusdb -f PADUS.sql

And getting the following error:

psql:PADUS.sql:36: ERROR:  function addgeometrycolumn(unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown, unknown, integer) does not exist
LINE 1: SELECT AddGeometryColumn('','padus_1_1_cbi_edition','the_geo...
HINT:  No function matches the given name and argument types. You might need to add explicit type casts.

I have PostGIS installed.

The SQL commands leading to the error (being put into an otherwise empty database) are:

SET CLIENT_ENCODING TO UTF8;
SET STANDARD_CONFORMING_STRINGS TO ON;
BEGIN;
CREATE TABLE "padus_1_1_cbi_edition" (gid serial PRIMARY KEY,
"us_id" int4,
"category" varchar(10),
"gis_acres" numeric,
...
BUNCH OF COLUMNS, none of which is called "the_geom"
...
"comments" varchar(200),
"shape_leng" numeric,
"shape_area" numeric);
SELECT AddGeometryColumn('','padus_1_1_cbi_edition','the_geom','-1','MULTIPOLYGON',2);
COMMIT;

Any thoughts on what this might mean and how to resolve the problem?

Answer

So, as it turns out, it is not enough to simply have installed PostGIS on one's machine.

Originally, I'd chosen sudo apt-get install postgresql postgis on Ubuntu 10.10. This left me with a working version of PostGRE 8.4, but no sign of PostGIS.

Therefore, I tried sudo apt-get install postgresql-8.4-postgis.

But one's work doesn't end there! You need to set up the PostGIS database.

This website provides instructions on doing this and using the database afterwards.