Re: weird initdb output

Geoffrey <lists(at)serioustechnology(dot)com> writes:
> I wrote a script that creates a new database from an existing backup.
> Works great on my machine. Another user tries to use it and sees the
> following output from initdb:

> could not change directory to "/root"
> The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user
> "postgres".
> This user must also own the server process.
> .
> .

> Why is it trying to change directory to /root???

IIRC, part of the startup process involves chdir'ing to where the initdb
executable is and then chdir'ing back to whatever directory had been
current when you called initdb. I speculate the other guy was root and
did "su postgres" not "su - postgres", so his cwd was still root's home
directory.

This might be harmless as long as you gave an absolute path for PGDATA
to initdb, but I'd still recommend using su - not just su.

regards, tom lane