Re: Tablespace setup issue

psql is the client, not the server. What user you run psql as doesn’t make a difference, it’s what user the server is running as that makes the difference, since it is the server that interacts with the file system. psql simply connects to and interacts with the PostgreSQL server.

---
Israel Brewster
Software Engineer
Alaska Volcano Observatory
Geophysical Institute - UAF
2156 Koyukuk Drive
Fairbanks AK 99775-7320
Work: 907-474-5172
cell: 907-328-9145

> On Nov 21, 2019, at 7:46 AM, Sébastien Bihorel <pomchip(at)free(dot)fr> wrote:
>
> Thank you everyone for your responses. It is great to see so much feedback.
>
> Based upon all the responses, I was able to successfully set my tablespace doing the following:
> Using /usr/data/pgdata96_sebastien as target tablespace directory
> Permissions were set to: chmod postgres:postgres /usr/data/pgdata96_sebastien
> Starting psql using: sudo -u postgres psql
> Issuing:
> CREATE TABLESPACE sebdata LOCATION '/usr/data/pgdata96_sebastien';
> ALTER DATABASE sebastien set TABLESPACE sebdata;
> One thing that is still a bit surprising to me is that even if I start psql with the sebastien user, it seems that psql interacts with the file system as postgres (at least, that's what I infer from the original error messages I got when using the sebastien user and trying to set the tablespace to a file owned by sebastien).
>
> Thanks
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 21, 2019 at 9:48 AM Sébastien Bihorel <pomchip(at)free(dot)fr <mailto:pomchip(at)free(dot)fr>> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am new to this list and reaching out because I am having troubles setting up a local PostgreSQL database on my laptop. Maybe, as a preamble, I should say that I am pretty much a novice trying to teach myself and get practical experience about database and SQL queries (I have some general idea about relational DB structure and operation but no actual experience creating a DB or writing SQL queries).
>
> Some background about my setup:
> - OS: my laptop runs Linux Mint 19.1 (a flavor of ubuntu 18.04); psql 12.1 was installed along with pgadmin 4. There is a single user (ie, sebastien) on this machine and the group postgres exists.
> - database: I have successfully created the new superuser sebastien
> List of roles
> Role name | Attributes | Member of
> -----------+------------------------------------------------------------+-----------
> postgres | Superuser, Create role, Create DB, Replication, Bypass RLS | {}
> sebastien | Superuser, Create DB +| {}
> | Password valid until infinity |
>
> I have also successfully created a database (sebastien) for the new superuser sebastien, and a schema (test) within this database.
>
> Now, I would like to assign a particular disk location for the tablespace used by this database but I am getting all kinds of errors apparently linked to folder permissions.
>
> The location is /home/sebastien/data/pgdata96_sebastien has the following properties:
>
> /home/sebastien/data $ ls -l
> drwxr-xr-x 2 sebastien postgres 4096 Nov 19 09:14 pgdata96_sebastien
>
> Starting psql as sebastien, I tried the following requests and got the following errors:
>
> sebastien=# CREATE TABLESPACE sebdata LOCATION '/home/sebastien/data/pgdata96_sebastien';
> ERROR: could not set permissions on directory "/home/sebastien/data/pgdata96_sebastien": Permission denied
> sebastien=# ALTER DATABASE sebastien set TABLESPACE '/home/sebastien/data/pgdata96_sebastien';
> ERROR: syntax error at or near "'/home/sebastien/data/pgdata96_sebastien'"
> LINE 1: ALTER DATABASE sebastien set TABLESPACE '/home/sebastien/dat...
>
> The manual states "The location must be an existing, empty directory that is owned by the PostgreSQL operating system user." So, I am not sure what I am doing wrong. Web searches ran on these error messages did not enlighten me more...
>
> I would greatly appreciated any pointers to reference material on these issues or advises on how to approach this.
>
> Thank you in advance for your time.