"Permission denied" when trying to initialize PostgreSQL database server on Linux

Question

I am trying to set up PostgreSQL in Linux, but the following error comes up:

[postgres@kibearch ~]$ initdb --pgdata=/var/lib/pgsql/data
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 "en_US.UTF-8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Data page checksums are disabled.

creating directory /var/lib/pgsql/data ... initdb: error: could not create directory "/var/lib/pgsql": Permission denied

If I try to use sudo initdb --pgdata=/var/lib/psql/data/, it says that initdb can not be used with sudo.

Here are the steps I did:

sudo pacman -S postgresql
Switched to user postgres user using this command: su - postgres
Tried to initialize the server but the aforementioned error showed up

What can I do?

use a directory writeable by user postgres. What is your postgres users ~ ? — clamp
– clamp, Commented Oct 5, 2020 at 21:48

clamp · Accepted Answer · 2020-10-05 21:58:20Z

4

As root:

mkdir /var/lib/pgsql
chown postgres  /var/lib/pgsql

As postgres:

initdb --pgdata=/var/lib/pgsql/data

answered Oct 5, 2020 at 21:58

clamp

3,6011 gold badge10 silver badges19 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

"Permission denied" when trying to initialize PostgreSQL database server on Linux

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

1 Answer 1

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related