Re: initdb problem - Mailing list pgsql-admin

On Thu, 2003-09-18 at 09:25, Jaskier wrote:
> Hi,
>
> No it will not work, You have to be owner, or have full access to this
> directory. Also you should, I think this is necessary to run Initdb as a
> Postgres user.

It can't be run as root, but it can be run as any other user. The key is
that whichever user runs initdb will be the "master user" of the
database and must own your $PGDATA directory.

>
> This is what you have to do:
>
> As root change rights to this /usr/local/pgsql and change the owner (it
> would be better) to Postgres
> Then do exactly the same what you have already tried to do, but as a
> Postgres User
>
> Should Work
>
> Regards
>
> Andrzej Schulz
> Galileo Selidor
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org
> [mailto:pgsql-admin-owner@postgresql.org] On Behalf Of Andy Callan
> Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 11:02 AM
> To: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
> Subject: [ADMIN] initdb problem
>
> My installation of PostgreSQL was created when i installed a GIS
> application but it does
> not appear to have a data cluster specified so I did the following:
>
> [Computer:local/pgsql/bin] andrewcallan% ./initdb -D
> /usr/local/pgsql/data
>          The files belonging to this database system will be owned by
> user "andrewcallan".
>          This user must also own the server process.
>
>           Fixing permissions on existing directory
> /usr/local/pgsql/data... chmod: /usr/local/
>           pgsql/data: Operation not permitted
>
>           initdb failed.
>
> Also just for kicks I tried to startup to server since i don't know
> exactly what the auto-
> install did and did not do and this is what happened:
>
> [Computer:local/pgsql/bin] andrewcallan% ./postmaster -D
> /usr/local/pgsql/data
>            FATAL 1:  data directory /usr/local/pgsql/data has group or
> world access;
>            permissions should be u=rwx (0700)
>
>   --I created the /data directory just with a mkdir as the root b/c at
> the time i did not
> know if initdb would create it if it didn't exist,

it will try but often fail if /usr/local/pgsql is owned by root. usually
you have to create the /data directory and then chown it to whomever you
want to run initdb.

> its my understanding
> initdb will change the
> permissions as needed so this problem should go away....
>
> I am completely new to PostgreSQL and have spent the last couple weeks
> playing with
> installing both it and mySQL to try to link some data to the GIS
> application so I really do
> not know what am I doing and this could be a really stupid mistake,
> please be gentle....
> Many thanks for your assistance.
>

http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.3/interactive/creating-cluster.html

Robert Treat
--
Build A Brighter Lamp :: Linux Apache {middleware} PostgreSQL