Re: troubles with initdb

>>The data directory in the initdb command is different
>>from the one you mention above - is that the case or
>>were you just abbreviating?

Yes, I had intended them to be different. My D drive is a small
internal hard drive where I install all my application software, but I
wanted to put the database files on the E drive and the logs on the F
drive, both of which are on the SAN and have plenty of disk space
available.

>> Also, looking at the way the command is documented,
>>I wonder if -D needs to be the last option? - Only a guess.

I tried rearranging the order of the command line arguments several
different ways. Doesn't seem to matter. Whichever is the second one
gets flagged as the error. I got rid of the -A argument, and it just
shifted the error down to the next parameter.

>> You don't need to do that. It's fine to use the same
>> binaries and just have multiple data directories.
>> It's also unnecessary to create a second user account
>> for the second instance, though you can if you'd prefer
>> to isolate them.

I was hoping to completely isolate them from each other, including the
binaries. Some day we'll be able to upgrade the database to 9, but
we'll want to do that only on the dev instance at first - keeping the
test instance at 8.3 until we are sure we've got everything working OK
in 9. The IT folks are very stingy with dev & test servers, so I am
forced to run both instances on the same virtual server.

> When you run initdb, are you invoking it via runas.exe as
> postgres_test ? Or logging in as the postgres_test user?

I am doing this logged in as the 'postgres_test' account. I tried to
run it logged in as myself using "runas", but the command prompt
window disappears as soon as I enter the password for the
'postgres_test' account. I'm running this via a terminal server
window, in console mode. The server is in a datacenter across town.

This is driving me nuts. Does anyone know if there are any other
methods of creating a 2nd instance of Postgres (on Windows) besides
running initdb?