Re: Optional postgres database not so optional in 8.1 - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:

>On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 12:01:31AM +1100, John Hansen wrote:
>  
>
>>On a fresh installation of postgrsql 8.1    if you drop the
>>'postgres' database,
>>psql, createdb, etc. no longer works.
>>
>>psql -l; ignores -dtemplate1, and createdb doesn't have such an option.
>>    
>>
>
>What distribution? I've never seen this "postgres" database you speak
>of. It certainly not on any systems I've used. Do you have a PGDATABASE
>variable in your environment?
>
>  
>

The 8.1 release notes have this:
   *
     Make initdb create a new standard database called postgres, and     convert utilities to use postgres rather than
template1for     standard lookups (Dave)
 
     In prior releases, template1 was used both as a default connection     for utilities like createuser, and as a
templatefor new     databases. This caused CREATE DATABASE to sometimes fail, because     a new database cannot be
createdif anyone else is in the template     database. With this change, the default connection database is now
postgres,meaning it is much less likely someone will be using     template1 during CREATE DATABASE.
 


cheers

andrew