[SOLVED] Root denied permission to change directory initialising postgresql

Wed · 06-18-2022, 01:26 PM

In a Virtualbox VM, pure 64 bit slackware 15 install, I have installed postgresql. According to the readme, it needs to be initialised thusly:

Code:

su postgres -c "initdb -D /var/lib/pgsql/14/data --locale=en_US.UTF-8 -A md5 -W"

Quote:

root@packages:~# su postgres -c "initdb -D /var/lib/pgsql/14/data --locale=sv_SE.UTF-8 -A md5 -W"
could not change directory to "/root": Permission denied
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 "sv_SE.UTF-8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "swedish".

Data page checksums are disabled.

Enter new superuser password:

(I did exchange en_US for sv_SE)

Is the bold statement merely an aesthetic nuisance, or could it be be a problem down the road? Can I fix it somehow?

Incidentally, if I abort with Ctrl-C, the characters stop showing as I type, and I have to reconnect to see the writings again.

suramya · 06-18-2022, 01:33 PM

You are trying to run the postgreSQL server as postgres user from the /root directory. The user doesn't have access to the /root directory and thus gives you the error. You should try to run the following command instead:

Code:

su - postgres -c "initdb -D /var/lib/pgsql/14/data --locale=sv_SE.UTF-8 -A md5 -W"

This will use the user environment of the postgres user (including the home directory) so should run without errors/warnings.

ljb643 · 06-19-2022, 08:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wed

...
Is the bold statement merely an aesthetic nuisance, or could it be be a problem down the road? Can I fix it somehow?

No, it's fine. You got this message because you did "su" while in root's home directory. When su changed to the postgres user, it could no longer read the current directory - because the postgres user has no permissions to root's home. The error is from su, but the initdb seems to have run OK and created the database. You can avoid the error message with "cd /tmp" before su, if you want.

The reason you got no characters after Ctrl+C is that initdb was prompting you for the database admin password, with echo off.

Wed · 06-20-2022, 04:04 PM

Many thanks for the explanations! It got my woes solved.