Re: PostgreSQL uninstall fails

On 11/23/2011 06:47 AM, J.V. wrote:
> So if there is only one versin of postgeSQL installed and no other
> products with the name "postgres", which I am guessing is very typical
> in most instances, can I change the uninstaller to delete/remove
> everything that this installer installed?

The installer is, unfortunately, not open source, so you can't :S

That aside, the problem is with determining reliably when the product
being uninstalled is the only product still using the `postgres' user,
etc. That might sound easy, but in practice it isn't as installers can't
be trusted to register themselves in any single central place or to
unregister themselves properly on uninstall (assuming they're even
uninstalled by the user not just deleted).

> If there is another instance, it would leave the common things around of
> course, but uninstalling a single instance leaves a lot of droppings
> around that need to be manually cleaned up.

I'd like to see a "clean uninstall" command line option that'd remove
the user account, etc even if it broke things. Let the *user* judge when
a clean uninstall is appropriate, since they know what they've installed.

This can be provided as a vbs script that talked to wmi. If you were to
write a suitable script, I'm sure the EnterpriseDB folks would consider
including it in the installer and adding an option to run it on uninstall.

--
Craig Ringer