Re: Alternate db location

"Bender, Cheryl" <cbender(at)mriresearch(dot)org> writes:
> I need to add an alternate db location for my 7.3.4 server (running on
> FreeBSD 5.2 Release)
> I thought I did everything according to the administrator's guide, but I
> fail at createdb.

How are you starting the postmaster, exactly?

A lot of people use start scripts that boil down to something like

su - postgres -c "postmaster ..."

The "su -" means "throw away the existing environment variables and
adopt the environment that would be obtained by logging in from scratch
as postgres". So it doesn't matter *what* you do before executing such
a script; the environment variables you have won't affect what the
postmaster gets.

What you have to do to play with such a script is put the export or
setenv command into whatever "~postgres/.profile" file will be read by
the standard shell that su will invoke. This is what you want anyway,
really, since anything you do any other way will be lost in a reboot.

This'll all get a lot easier in 8.0, thankfully (no more dependence
on environment variables).

regards, tom lane