Re: [HACKERS] More initdb follies

Peter Eisentraut wrote:
>In my digging around in initdb, I came to the --username option, which
>supposedly allows you to initialize the database system with another
>username. Not a bad idea, really.
>
>Obviously, you'd have to be root in that case, because you want to create
>files in someone else's name. But if you are root, the backends will
>refuse to execute, wisely so. So this option is totally broken.
>
>I propose that I remove it, and that it instead be possible that you can
>do
>
>root# su -l postgres -c 'initdb ...'

You can already do this; this example is from the Debian package installation
(which runs as root, of course):

su postgres -c "cd ${PGHOME}; . ./${PROFILE}; initdb -e ${Encoding} -l
${PGLIB} -r ${PGDATA} -u postgres"

It can be quite tricky, though, since there are a number of different su
versions around. I would prefer it if root were able to run initdb directly
and set the ownerships as part of the process. The ability to run as root
should only apply to initdb.

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