> Version 2 attached, some significant re-working. Starting to think that > initdb isn't the place for some of this content - in particular the stuff > I'm deciding to move down to the Notes section. Might consider moving some > of it to the Server Setup and Operation chapter 19 - Creating Cluster (or > nearby...) [1]. > > I settled on "cluster owner" over "cluster user" and made the terminology > consistent throughout initdb and the glossary (haven't looked at chapter 19 > yet). Also added it to the glossary.
Generally speaking, I like the idea of documenting these things. However it sounds like you're not done with the wording and editing, so I'm not committing the whole patch, but it seems a good starting point to at least have some basic definitions. So I've extracted them from your patch and pushed those. You can already see it at https://www.postgresql.org/docs/devel/glossary.html
Agreed on the not quite ready yet, and that the glossary is indeed self-contained enough to go in by itself at this point. Thank you for doing that.
I left out almost all the material from the patch that's not in the glossary proper, and also a few phrases in the glossary itself. Some of these sounded like security considerations rather than part of the definitions. I think we should have a separate chapter in Part III (Server Administration) that explains many security aspects; right now there's no hope of collecting a lot of very important advice in a single place, so a wannabe admin has no chance of getting things right. That seems to me a serious deficiency. A new chapter could provide a lot of general advice on every aspect that needs to be considered, and link to the reference section for additional details. Maybe part of these initdb considerations could be there, too.
I'll consider that approach as well as other spots in the documentation on this next pass.
