PG Doc comments form <noreply@postgresql.org> writes:
> In the Getting Started section of the documentation which would be used by a
> new user immediately after installing PostgreSQL, the user is asked to run
> $ createdb mydb
> If the database is correctly installed, this first command to be run by the
> new user inevitably fails with the error:
> createdb: error: connection to server at "localhost" (::1), port 5432
> failed: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "Mark"
The out-of-the-box factory default is indeed that there is no password
for the initial user, but one is not needed because the default
authentication method is "trust". You have not mentioned exactly how
you installed Postgres, but a plausible guess is that you are using
somebody's packaging of Postgres and that somebody saw fit to override
the factory default. If so, there should be some documentation about
what they did and how you're supposed to achieve initial access in
the package's documentation.
We can't really hope to document everything that every packager does
in the community Postgres documentation, not least because they seldom
inform us. I suppose it might be helpful to add something along the
lines of "if you are using a pre-packaged version of Postgres, please
consult the packager's documentation".
regards, tom lane
