Re: Official Windows Installer and Documentation

On Wednesday, July 27, 2022, Julien Rouhaud <rjuju123(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:

> On Wed, Jul 27, 2022 at 07:02:51PM -0700, David G. Johnston wrote:
> >
> > In the end the problem is ours and cannot be simply assigned to a
> > third-party. So let's resolve it here (on this list, whatever the
> > solution) where representatives from all parties are present.
>
> We could amend the pg_upgrade (and maybe other if needed, but I don't see
> any
> other occurences of RUNAS) documentation to be a bit more general, like the
> non-windows part of it, maybe something like
>
> For Windows users, you must be logged into an administrative account, and
> then
> start a shell as the user running the postgres service and set the proper
> path.
> Assuming a user named postgres and the binaries installed in C:\Program
> Files\PostgreSQL\14:
>
> RUNAS /USER:postgres "CMD.EXE"
> SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\14\bin;
>
> It's ultimately up to the users to adapt the commands to match their
> environment.
>

Ultimately we do our users the best service if when they operate an
installation using defaults that they have documentation showing how to
perform something like an upgrade that works with those defaults. I don’t
see much point making that change in isolation until it is obvious nothing
better is forthcoming. If the o/s user postgres doesn’t exist then you need
to supply -U postgres cause the install user for PostgresSQL is still
postgres. So why not assume the user is whatever the EDB installer uses
and make that the example? If someone has an install on Windows that uses
the postgres account adapting the command for them should be trivial and
the majority installer users get a command sequence that works.

David J.