No MAC expert but try this when changing to the postgres user:
su - postgres
the hyphen gives you an environment for the postgres user.
J. Herbers
Quoting Joe Barwell <jbar@es.co.nz>:
> Hello people,
>
> Having installed the universal binary for pg 8.2.4 on my mac
> running 10.3.9, I'm now trying to use the initdb command,
> but keep running into problems. I can't seem to get the
> right syntax. Can anyone suggest where I'm going wrong?
> Here's what terminal shows:
>
> Acorn acorn 1 acorn$ login root
> Password:
> Last login: Thu Jun 14 13:43:54 on ttyp1
> Welcome to Darwin!
> Acorn:~ root# su postgres
> shell-init: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot
> access parent directories: Permission denied
> su: /dev/null/.bashrc: Not a directory
> Acorn:/var/root postgres$ initdb -D
> /Library/PostgreSQL8/data
> su: initdb: command not found
> Acorn:/var/root postgres$ cd
> chdir: could not get current directory: getcwd: cannot
> access parent directories: Permission denied
> su: cd: /dev/null: Not a directory
> Acorn:/var/root postgres$ cwd
> su: cwd: command not found
> Acorn:/var/root postgres$ /Library/PostgreSQL8/initdb -D
> /Library/PostgreSQL8/data
> su: /Library/PostgreSQL8/initdb: No such file or directory
> Acorn:/var/root postgres$ /Library/PostgreSQL8/bin/initdb -D
> /Library/PostgreSQL8/data
> could not identify current directory: Permission denied
> could not identify current directory: Permission denied
> could not identify current directory: Permission denied
> The program "postgres" is needed by initdb but was not found
> in the
> same directory as "initdb".
> Check your installation.
> Acorn:/var/root postgres$
>
> TIA,
>
> Joe
>
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