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Thread: forking postmaster on my own - not as pguser

forking postmaster on my own - not as pguser

From
Gregory Stone
Date:
I have a need to run postgres only when my Java application is running.
Basically I want to do a Runtime.exec() from java in order to start up the
DB server. Is there any reason why this should present a problem? My
init.d script is su-ing to the pguser before launching pg_ctl with all the
various params. Can I just emulate this, but not su to the pguser account
but use the exisitng user logon? Also, besides standard unix safety rules
about limited access accounts and all, is there any reason I HAVE to be
the pguser to start up postgres?

Thanks,

Gregory

=====
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gregory Stone       |  "Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were
guomo@yahoo.com     |    a member of congress; but I repeat myself."
                    |                                      - Mark Twain
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Re: forking postmaster on my own - not as pguser

From
"Nigel J. Andrews"
Date:
On Mon, 5 Jan 2004, Gregory Stone wrote:

> I have a need to run postgres only when my Java application is running.
> Basically I want to do a Runtime.exec() from java in order to start up the
> DB server. Is there any reason why this should present a problem? My
> init.d script is su-ing to the pguser before launching pg_ctl with all the
> various params. Can I just emulate this, but not su to the pguser account
> but use the exisitng user logon? Also, besides standard unix safety rules
> about limited access accounts and all, is there any reason I HAVE to be
> the pguser to start up postgres?

No need to be the pguser user at all. Any user of the system can run a postgres
cluster. Note, that is a postgres cluster, i.e. if you're trying to start
postgres to look at databases in a cluster that was built by a different user
then it isn't going to work.

So in summary, what you want to do is something like:

initdb -D /home/myuser/data blah blah blah
pg_ctl -D /home/myuser/data blah blah blah
createdb -D /home/myuser/data blah blah blah
all the other stuff to build your DBs and then you just need to fork and exec
as myuser in your application.


--
Nigel Andrews