Thread: db user named 'root'

Hello,

I have recently installed postgresql on a x486 box running debian linux, as a prelude to installing an open source bioinformatics system called the longhorn array database (lad).  The lad install requires you to create a postgres user named 'root' with create priveleges, in order to run an install script (which presumably creates a database as owner root).  I am able to create a db user named 'root', but get an error when trying to create a db as root.

As postgres (db superuser):

createuser -s  -d root

CREATE ROLE

su root

createdb root_db

createdb: could not connect to database template1: FATAL:  user "root" does not exist

psql

psql: FATAL:  database "root" does not exist

But the user root exists in the system:

As postgres:

psql

                               List of roles

 Role name | Superuser | Create role | Create DB | Connections | Member of

-----------+-----------+-------------+-----------+-------------+-----------

 atul      | yes       | yes         | yes       | no limit    |

 postgres  | yes       | yes         | yes       | no limit    |

 root      | yes       | yes         | yes       | no limit    |

(3 rows)

This shows that root is registered as a db user.

Also, postgres can create a database for root:

As postgres:

createdb -O root root_db

CREATE DATABASE

A database was successfully created with owner 'root':

As postgres:

psql -l

        List of databases

   Name    |  Owner   | Encoding

-----------+----------+-----------

 atul      | atul     | SQL_ASCII

 postgres  | postgres | SQL_ASCII

 root_db   | root     | SQL_ASCII

 template0 | postgres | SQL_ASCII

 template1 | postgres | SQL_ASCII

(5 rows)

But root cannot access it—in fact postgres says the database does not exist!

As postgres:

su root

psql root_db

psql: FATAL: database “root_db” does not exist!

Can anyone tell what's going on here?  Why won't postgres allow root to createdb himself, or to use psql?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Atul