Harald Armin Massa wrote:
> John,
>
>
>> the postgres windows uninstaller probably should be offering to delete the
>> postgres user account when it deletes the service, since the installer
>> created that account in the first place.
>>
>
> deleting the postgres-windows-account is not really what someone
> should wish for. As the files of that account (i.E. the
> database-files) are tightly coupled with the account on Windows.
>
you're right, I didn't think that through.
I suppose the installer, when faced with an existing postgres account
from a previous installation, could offer to reset its password. of
course, if there was more than one postgres instance running in
different directories and different services using this same account,
that would complicate things too. ugh
I've several times had to talk people through how to manually set an
account password and the service password to match. this sort of
thing is beyond the typical windows user's experience. Note, btw, the
service password can be reset on win2000 and newer systems with
C:\> sc config pgsql-8.3 password= newservicepassword
C:\> sc qc pgsql-8.3
[SC] GetServiceConfig SUCCESS
SERVICE_NAME: pgsql-8.3
TYPE : 10 WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
START_TYPE : 2 AUTO_START
ERROR_CONTROL : 1 NORMAL
BINARY_PATH_NAME : D:\postgres\8.3\bin\pg_ctl.exe
runservice -w -N "pgsql-8.3" -D "D:\postgres\8.3\data\"
LOAD_ORDER_GROUP :
TAG : 0
DISPLAY_NAME : PostgreSQL Database Server 8.3
DEPENDENCIES :
SERVICE_START_NAME : .\postgres
[note the use of whitespace has to be exactly as given]