db user named 'root'

Hello,

I have recently installed postgresql on a x486 box running debian linux,
as a prelude to installing an open source bioinformatics system called
the longhorn array database (lad). The lad install requires you to
create a postgres user named 'root' with create priveleges, in order to
run an install script (which presumably creates a database as owner
root). I am able to create a db user named 'root', but get an error
when trying to create a db as root.

As postgres (db superuser):

createuser -s -d root

CREATE ROLE

su root

createdb root_db

createdb: could not connect to database template1: FATAL: user "root"
does not exist

psql

psql: FATAL: database "root" does not exist

But the user root exists in the system:

As postgres:

psql

List of roles

Role name | Superuser | Create role | Create DB | Connections | Member
of

-----------+-----------+-------------+-----------+-------------+--------
---

atul | yes | yes | yes | no limit |

postgres | yes | yes | yes | no limit |

root | yes | yes | yes | no limit |

(3 rows)

This shows that root is registered as a db user.

Also, postgres can create a database for root:

As postgres:

createdb -O root root_db

CREATE DATABASE

A database was successfully created with owner 'root':

As postgres:

psql -l

List of databases

Name | Owner | Encoding

-----------+----------+-----------

atul | atul | SQL_ASCII

postgres | postgres | SQL_ASCII

root_db | root | SQL_ASCII

template0 | postgres | SQL_ASCII

template1 | postgres | SQL_ASCII

(5 rows)

But root cannot access it-in fact postgres says the database does not
exist!

As postgres:

su root

psql root_db

psql: FATAL: database "root_db" does not exist!

Can anyone tell what's going on here? Why won't postgres allow root to
createdb himself, or to use psql?

Thanks in advance for your help!

Atul

Huntsman Cancer Institute wishes to promote open communication while protecting confidential and/or privileged information. If you have received this message in error, please inform the sender and delete all copies.