How to install pgAdmin 4 in desktop mode on Ubuntu

For pgAdmin 4 v4.21 on Ubuntu, according to the download page:

Install dependencies, create a virtual environment, download, install & configure

Using Python2.x

sudo apt-get install virtualenv python-pip libpq-dev python-dev

cd
virtualenv pgadmin4
cd pgadmin4
source bin/activate

pip install https://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/pgadmin/pgadmin4/v4.21/pip/pgadmin4-4.21-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Using Python3.6 (Preferred to avoid encoding related issues)

sudo apt-get install virtualenv python3-pip libpq-dev python3-dev

cd
virtualenv -p python3 pgadmin4
cd pgadmin4
source bin/activate

pip3 install https://ftp.postgresql.org/pub/pgadmin/pgadmin4/v4.21/pip/pgadmin4-4.21-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Configure

Override default paths and set it to single-user mode in the local configuration file:

nano lib/python2.7/site-packages/pgadmin4/config_local.py

For Python3.x:

nano lib/python3.6/site-packages/pgadmin4/config_local.py

Write:

import os
DATA_DIR = os.path.realpath(os.path.expanduser(u'~/.pgadmin/'))
LOG_FILE = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, 'pgadmin4.log')
SQLITE_PATH = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, 'pgadmin4.db')
SESSION_DB_PATH = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, 'sessions')
STORAGE_DIR = os.path.join(DATA_DIR, 'storage')
SERVER_MODE = False

Run

python lib/python2.7/site-packages/pgadmin4/pgAdmin4.py

For Python3.x:

python3 lib/python3.6/site-packages/pgadmin4/pgAdmin4.py

Access

Access at http://localhost:5050

Exit

Exit with Ctrl-C

Run again

cd ~/pgadmin4
source bin/activate
python lib/python2.7/site-packages/pgadmin4/pgAdmin4.py

For Python3.6

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/pgadmin4
source bin/activate
python3 lib/python3.6/site-packages/pgadmin4/pgAdmin4.py

Make a shortcut

touch ~/pgadmin4/pgadmin4
chmod +x ~/pgadmin4/pgadmin4
nano ~/pgadmin4/pgadmin4

Write:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/pgadmin4
source bin/activate
python lib/python2.7/site-packages/pgadmin4/pgAdmin4.py

For Python3.6

#!/bin/bash
cd ~/pgadmin4
source bin/activate
python3 lib/python3.6/site-packages/pgadmin4/pgAdmin4.py

Now you can just run it with a simpler command:

~/pgadmin4/pgadmin4

Python3 users

Replace [x] in Python3.6 with your respective version.

Conflict with pgAdmin 3 configuration

pgAdmin 4 will not start in the environment where pgAdmin 3 was previously installed and used because of incompatible configuration in the .pgadmin directory. The simplest solution is to either clear that directory or tweak config_local.py to point to a clean new .pgadmin4 directory.

Other option is to use docker and a docker image provided by thaJeztah - https://github.com/thaJeztah/pgadmin4-docker

$ docker run --rm -p 5050:5050 thajeztah/pgadmin4

Then to access a PostgreSQL DB instance from within pgadmin4 you should use the IP of the host instead of localhost and 127.0.0.1 since Docker will map those to the container itself.

The IP of a dockerised DB instance could be found with 2 steps:

• find the container ID of your db with:

  docker ps

• inspect the container_name to find its ip with:

  docker inspect <ID from previous step>

you are looking for something like "IPAddress": "172.18.0.3"

On Ubuntu 16.04 you can install pgadmin4 with

sudo sh -c 'echo "deb http://apt.postgresql.org/pub/repos/apt/ $(lsb_release -cs)-pgdg main" >> /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pgdg.list'
sudo apt install wget ca-certificates
wget --quiet -O - https://www.postgresql.org/media/keys/ACCC4CF8.asc | sudo apt-key add 
sudo apt update
sudo apt install pgadmin4

I have tested this on 16.04.

source for the above approach