Re: "1-Click" installer problems - Mailing list pgsql-general

There is a CLI option --serviceaccount <username> which a user can use to make any user the owner of postgres service and data files.

Also, if you choose 'postgres' as the service account and the 'postgres' user doesn't exist. The installer will create postgres as a 'locked' user account. Thats the reason you dont see 'postgres' listed as any other normal user. These steps were taken to enhance the security of the data folder.

Again, anytime a user is free to use any account as the service account and not use 'postgres'.

On 4/2/10 12:37 PM, John Gage wrote:

Then I don't understand why the installer doesn't do the same thing.

Or, in the alternative, why it doesn't ask you what you want these parameters to be.

I would say that, typically, someone installing postgres does it, conceivably, as root or, more likely, as a user.

What he or she doesn't do is install it as user 'postgres'.

Yet, that is what the one-click installer does.  I do not believe that this is intuitive.  What is more, gratuitiously adding a user to the system doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense.

In addition, all other one-click installations on the Mac either don't ask for root privileges, because they don't need them, or ask for them, but still install under the current user.  Some installations will even ask whether you want the application usable by all users of the machine or just you.

But none, repeat none, create a new user.

What is more, through standard unix commands such as "who" or "cat /etc/passwd", I cannot find the user 'postgres' on my machine...even though he is the owner of the Postgres data files...on my machine.

There's the rub.  'postgres' owns files...my files...on my machine, yet he is not on my machine.  Not good.

I should add that I am an accolyte of Postgres and am only raising this (possible) issue in the most positive spirit I am capable of.  In addition, I think that the people on this list are superb, and the responses are unbelievably helpful and accurate.

John


On Apr 2, 2010, at 8:29 AM, John R Pierce wrote:

John Gage wrote:

The 8.4.2 documentation says:

"The default user name is your Unix user name, as is the default database name."

when you as a user connect to the database server the commands like psql, pg_dump, etc all use your unix username as the default for the database username, and your username as teh default for the database name, unless you specify a different user and/or database on hte command line.