initdb(1)
INITDB(1) PostgreSQL Server Applications INITDB(1)
NAME
initdb - create a new PostgreSQL database cluster
SYNOPSIS
initdb [ option... ] [ --pgdata ] [ -D ] directory
DESCRIPTION
initdb creates a new PostgreSQL database cluster. A database
cluster is a collection of databases that are managed by a
single server instance.
Creating a database cluster consists of creating the direc-
tories in which the database data will live, generating the
shared catalog tables (tables that belong to the whole clus-
ter rather than to any particular database), and creating
the template1 and postgres databases. When you later create
a new database, everything in the template1 database is
copied. (Therefore, anything installed in template1 is
automatically copied into each database created later.) The
postgres database is a default database meant for use by
users, utilities and third party applications.
Although initdb will attempt to create the specified data
directory, it might not have permission if the parent direc-
tory of the desired data directory is root-owned. To ini-
tialize in such a setup, create an empty data directory as
root, then use chown to assign ownership of that directory
to the database user account, then su to become the database
user to run initdb.
initdb must be run as the user that will own the server pro-
cess, because the server needs to have access to the files
and directories that initdb creates. Since the server may
not be run as root, you must not run initdb as root either.
(It will in fact refuse to do so.)
initdb initializes the database cluster's default locale and
character set encoding. The collation order (LC_COLLATE) and
character set classes (LC_CTYPE, e.g. upper, lower, digit)
are fixed for all databases and can not be changed. Colla-
tion orders other than C or POSIX also have a performance
penalty. For these reasons it is important to choose the
right locale when running initdb. The remaining locale
categories can be changed later when the server is started.
All server locale values (lc_*) can be displayed via SHOW
ALL. More details can be found in in the documentation.
The character set encoding can be set separately for a data-
base when it is created. initdb determines the encoding for
the template1 database, which will serve as the default for
all other databases. To alter the default encoding use the
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INITDB(1) PostgreSQL Server Applications INITDB(1)
--encoding option. More details can be found in in the docu-
mentation.
OPTIONS
-A authmethod
--auth=authmethod
This option specifies the authentication method for
local users used in pg_hba.conf. Do not use trust
unless you trust all local users on your system. Trust
is the default for ease of installation.
-D directory
--pgdata=directory
This option specifies the directory where the database
cluster should be stored. This is the only information
required by initdb, but you can avoid writing it by
setting the PGDATA environment variable, which can be
convenient since the database server (postgres) can
find the database directory later by the same variable.
-E encoding
--encoding=encoding
Selects the encoding of the template database. This
will also be the default encoding of any database you
create later, unless you override it there. The default
is derived from the locale, or SQL_ASCII if that does
not work. The character sets supported by the Post-
greSQL server are described in in the documentation.
--locale=locale
Sets the default locale for the database cluster. If
this option is not specified, the locale is inherited
from the environment that initdb runs in. Locale sup-
port is described in in the documentation.
--lc-collate=locale
--lc-ctype=locale
--lc-messages=locale
--lc-monetary=locale
--lc-numeric=locale
--lc-time=locale
Like --locale, but only sets the locale in the speci-
fied category.
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INITDB(1) PostgreSQL Server Applications INITDB(1)
-U username
--username=username
Selects the user name of the database superuser. This
defaults to the name of the effective user running
initdb. It is really not important what the superuser's
name is, but one might choose to keep the customary
name postgres, even if the operating system user's name
is different.
-W
--pwprompt
Makes initdb prompt for a password to give the database
superuser. If you don't plan on using password authen-
tication, this is not important. Otherwise you won't be
able to use password authentication until you have a
password set up.
--pwfile=filename
Makes initdb read the database superuser's password
from a file. The first line of the file is taken as the
password.
Other, less commonly used, parameters are also available:
-d
--debug
Print debugging output from the bootstrap backend and a
few other messages of lesser interest for the general
public. The bootstrap backend is the program initdb
uses to create the catalog tables. This option gen-
erates a tremendous amount of extremely boring output.
-L directory
Specifies where initdb should find its input files to
initialize the database cluster. This is normally not
necessary. You will be told if you need to specify
their location explicitly.
-n
--noclean
By default, when initdb determines that an error
prevented it from completely creating the database
cluster, it removes any files it may have created
before discovering that it can't finish the job. This
option inhibits tidying-up and is thus useful for
debugging.
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INITDB(1) PostgreSQL Server Applications INITDB(1)
ENVIRONMENT
PGDATA
Specifies the directory where the database cluster is
to be stored; may be overridden using the -D option.
This utility, like most other PostgreSQL utilities, also
uses the environment variables supported by libpq (see in
the documentation).
SEE ALSO
postgres(1)
Application Last change: 2008-01-03 4
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