Postgres user gone after lion update¶

Tags: django, apple

I updated my mac to the latest osx feline: lion. Summary: virtually painless. Smooth. The only thing I had to figure out was how to get my virtual desktops back (“spaces”). Turns out that you have to go to the “mission control” (F9).

If you hover to the right (or left, depending on your multiple monitor setup) of the desktop(s) list at the top, you get a “+”. You can add desktops/spaces that way. Even my old F1-F4 shortcuts for my four desktops worked right away.

Now on to postgres, which I use for all my django websites. I installed it earlier this year by using the kyngchaos downloads. After the update to lion, I suddenly couldn’t connect to my local postgres database anymore.

Turned out the update removed the “postgres” user. I read somewhere that postgres is now included in OSX or something like that. Listing the contents of /usr/local/pgsql/ I saw that for instance the data/ directory was owned by user 101 and group postgres. So I wanted to re-create the “postgres” user and tie it to the 101 userid:

sudo dscl . -create /Users/postgres
sudo dscl . -create /Users/postgres UniqueID 101

I had to look up those commands as I was looking for linux’s regular adduser command, which doesn’t exist on OSX.

(And afterwards I restarted my mac as I didn’t know how to start that postgres server by hand… ;-)

… and when I wanted to post this blog entry I noticed that make was missing… Turns out I had to install xcode again. Installed it via the app store. And still no make. Ah, the app store installed an installer that I needed to run, sigh.

Well, you see this entry now, so there’s a /usr/bin/make on my machine now :-)