Is there a way to install the optional adminpack (contrib) tools for utilizing pgAdmin on an Amazon RDS PostgreSQL instance? My gut says no because of this question. When you don't have the tools installed you get the following message every time you connect via pgAdmin.
I understand the tools aren't required but if available I'd like to install them (if for no other reason than to remove the warning). When I connect to a DB instance on a Ubuntu server I can just apt-get them or click the Fix It button when connecting via pgAdmin, but I'm not sure how to (or if I can even) accomplish this on an RDS instance.
Best Answer
You will not be able to install any additional software on an Amazon RDS instance, because RDS is offered as a "software-as-a-service" (SaaS) platform.
With most/all SaaS offerings, you only get access to an endpoint and a limited set of configuration variables, and are not given access to the underlying architecture (e.g. OS, networking, hardware).
If you require anything other than the interface that Amazon provide, you will need to run your own PostgreSQL installation on top of an Amazon EC2 instance.