Postgresql – Strange PostgreSQL behaviour on service start

You are not doing anything wrong per se, and the documentation is not wrong. But the initscript from CentOS doesn't support you doing things this way, so you have to change the initscripts to not check for these files, since PostgreSQL will check for it itself and just try to start the database even if these files are not there.

So to test it out, comment out the if, then and the whole else block and just let it run the ... part of the script. PostgreSQL should read the settings correctly and start itself without a problem. And you might of course inform the people responsible for the CentOS package that they should do it differently. If it doesn't run, you should get a reasonable error message from PostgreSQL itself.

The /usr/pgsql-9.4/bin/postgresql94-setup script needs to be executed as root.

It detects the data directory parsing the service file.

This is the full command help:

Usage: postgresql94-setup {initdb|upgrade} [SERVICE_NAME]

Script is aimed to help sysadmin with basic database cluster administration.

The SERVICE_NAME is used for selection of proper unit configuration file; For
more info and howto/when use this script please look at the docu file
$README_RPM_DIST.  The 'postgresql'
string is used when no SERVICE_NAME is explicitly passed.

Available operation mode:
  initdb        Create a new PostgreSQL database cluster.  This is usually the
                first action you perform after PostgreSQL server installation.
  upgrade   Upgrade PostgreSQL database cluster to be usable with new
                server.  Use this if you upgraded your PostgreSQL server to
                newer major version (currently from $PREVMAJORVERSION \
to $PGMAJORVERSION).

Environment:
  PGSETUP_INITDB_OPTIONS     Options carried by this variable are passed to
                             subsequent call of \`initdb\` binary (see man
                             initdb(1)).  This variable is used also during
                             'upgrade' mode because the new cluster is actually
                             re-initialized from the old one.
  PGSETUP_PGUPGRADE_OPTIONS  Options in this variable are passed next to the
                             subsequent call of \`pg_upgrade\`.  For more info
                             about possible options please look at man
                             pg_upgrade(1).
  PGSETUP_DEBUG              Set to '1' if you want to see debugging output.