Re: Seeming contradiction in 22.1

Thanks David, this is very helpful!

I would have to agree with Tom, that while technically true, the text could
be reworded. namely it was not obvious to me that i had used a 'packager'
to install the clusters and therefore was doing something outside the
purview of the postgres documentation.

To me the last sentence would be clearer if it read something like:

"Most packagers will name this role `postgres` by default, but this is not
required".

That way it avoids the passive tense which leaves some ambiguity as to who
or what and when is naming this superuser.

Best,
Maja

On Thu, 23 Mar 2023, 16:09 Tom Lane, <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:

> "David G. Johnston" <david(dot)g(dot)johnston(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> > The root issue, IMO, is that all packagers have settled on the convention
> > of using Postgres for the superuser name, so if one only ever sees that,
> it
> > is easy to assume it is some kind of default of the software itself. In
> > the face of consistent evidence, people not reading the documentation is
> my
> > supposed assumption for their ignorance of this point. But reading the
> > docs, it is clear how the system really works (I.e., the name of the
> > bootstrap superuser comes is derived at initdb time from the environment
> > executing initdb).
>
> I agree that the docs are not incorrect as they stand, but maybe they
> could be phrased a little more clearly. The "Customarily," bit is perhaps
> too terse. I'm thinking about wording like
>
> This role is always a “superuser”, and by default it will have the
> same name as the operating system user that initialized the database
> cluster, unless another name is specified while running initdb.
> It is common, but not required, to arrange for this role to be named
> postgres.
>
> regards, tom lane
>