Comment by telemachos | Hacker News Reader

Comment by telemachos | Hacker News Reader

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From what I can tell, the app defaults to (1) no password and (2) a base user of $USER. Maybe a better way to put it: whoever you install it as is the owner of the app's folder in /Applications. That will be your base user. I think they're assuming (as is most common) a single-user Mac environment. (The postmaster.opts file hardcodes the name of the Postgres.app owner in the path for the data directory. So I don't think this would work as a multi-user application. But maybe I'm misunderstanding the installation.)

Anyhow, start the app, open a psql shell with /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/psql in a terminal window, and you get a session. Since (I think) the app is intended only for development use, I'm not sure if they intend for you to change those defaults. That's not to say that you shouldn't but just that the app is meant to be (nearly) zero conf. (The documentation suggests adding Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin to $PATH, which is probably a good idea if you will use the command line tools often.)

The user id is not the owner of the Application folder (the base user of the machine).

So n other words, since they didn't bother telling us the user/password, this app is useless. Better off using MacPorts.

Either I'm misunderstanding you, or you misunderstood me.

The /Application folder itself is owned by root:

    achilles /$ ls -ld Applications/
    drwxrwxr-x+ 55 root  admin  1870 Jul 20 06:54 Applications/

But that wasn't what I meant. I meant /Applications/Postgres.app. That is owned by the user who installs it to /Applications. Here it is on my machine, for example:

    achilles /$ ls -ld Applications/Postgres.app/
    drwxr-xr-x@ 3 achilles  staff  102 Jul 18 20:17 Applications/Postgres.app/

Beyond that, you can login (with no password), this way:

    achilles /$ /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/psql 
    psql (9.1.4)
    Type "help" for help.

    achilles=#

I'm sure it works because I just did it. The setup is arguably insecure, but again I don't think it's meant to be a production database. It's meant, as I understand it, for a single developer to use while coding.

Ahhh I see. I misunderstood you. Thanks.

PS. and pardon me for being rude - it was late and was filled with too much cheap wine.

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