Re: initdb problem on Windows XP Home

adurrant(at)cogeco(dot)ca wrote:
> Hi Again,
>
> I posted earlier about a problem installing 8.1.5 on Windows XP Home.
> THat message was delayed, so it likely will not show up.
>
> THe problem is occuring on execution of initdb. I skipped the cluster
> creation in the installation so that I could run it manually, but it
> made no difference.
>
> The contents of the temp file for the initdb is:
>
> The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user
> "postgres". This user must also own the server process.
>
> The database cluster will be initialized with locale C.
>
> fixing permissions on existing directory C:/Program
> Files/PostgreSQL/8.1/data ... ok creating subdirectories ... initdb:
> could not create directory "C:/Program Files": File exists initdb:
> removing contents of data directory "C:/Program
> Files/PostgreSQL/8.1/data"
>
> I tried specifying a folder that doesn't exist, and then I get a
> permissions error. Fine, I logged into the system under the
> restricted account and tried running initdb again.

OK. Stop. You've tried a bunch of different things without finding out
where the initial problem is.

You're running initdb manually, so you'll need to check the permissions
are in place manually too.

I'm assuming you have a user "postgres" that will own the files and run
the processes. Make sure that user "postgres" has full permissions on
"C:\Program Files\Postgresql\8.1"

Log in as user "postgres" (or use runas to open a shell as that user)
and then run:
initd -D "C:\Program Files\Postgresql\8.1\data" ...
Note the double quotes

Let us know what happens then.

PS - it might be simpler to run the uninstaller, make sure you've
deleted the PostgreSQL directories and user and just run it again.

--
Richard Huxton
Archonet Ltd