Alternate data locations ?

Patrick Spinler <spinler@means.net> writes:

$ export ARC_P_DAT_01="/home/httpd/data/arc_p_dat_01"
$ initlocation initlocation $ARC_P_DAT_01
<snip>
initlocation is complete
$ createdb -D $ARC_P_DAT_01 test
ERROR: The database path '/home/httpd/data/arc_p_dat_01' is invalid.
This may be due to a character that is not allowed or because the chosen
path isn't permitted for databases
createdb: database creation failed
$ sudo -u postgres ls -l $ARC_P_DAT_01
total 4
drwx------ 2 postgres http_adm 4096 Aug 18 23:10 base

So, everything looks okay. Can anyone give me a hint what might be
happening ? What can I do to debug this ?

You can't do it that way unless you've compiled the backend with
ALLOW_ABSOLUTE_DBPATHS defined, which is not the default setup
(mainly because some people consider it a security hole).

The standard way is (having done the initlocation script):
1. (Re) start the postmaster with ARC_P_DAT_01 defined in its
environment --- notice that you did not define that path variable
in the postmaster's environment, only the client's.
2. Do the createdb with -D ARC_P_DAT_01 (no dollar sign).

The idea is that the set of allowed database locations is controlled
by the dbadmin via putting them into the postmaster's environment or
not. I find this quite bogus myself, because the postmaster
environment will probably contain lots of things like $HOME that should
*not* be treated as database locations. But presently that's the setup.

regards, tom lane