Postgresql – pg_ctl start gives FATAL: role does not exist

postgresql

On my system, whoami returns Dan. I run initdb with the --username=PgUser argument. Then as OS user Dan I run pg_ctl start on the newly-initialized cluster, and it gives this output:

LOG:  database system was shut down at 2013-06-13 00:54:33 UTC
LOG:  autovacuum launcher started
LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
FATAL:  role "Dan" does not exist
 done
server started

The server appears to have started up normally. I believe the error occurs because it wants me to run pg_ctl as the OS user named PgUser. What I want to know is:

  • Is that belief correct?
  • Is there a way to specify the user as PgUser without using su? I would prefer not to create a new OS user and would like to use a PostgreSQL user with a different username (I'm doing some code refactoring that makes this more convenient).
  • Is the instance I started crippled in some way because I started it as OS user Dan?

Best Answer

This happens when you run pg_ctl start with the -w (wait) option, because it will try a test connection with a user that does not exist (in your case). But that's not really a problem (except for the confusing error message), because that proves that the server is up.

Related Question