> If you are
> on a platform that doesn't ordinarily set USER, you lose. I've been
> burnt by that myself.
>
> I am not sure whether we ought to make the code look at LOGNAME as
> a fallback if USER isn't set, or just document that you ought to set
> USER.
My take would be at least to change the installation documentation,
and improve the error message (you can never improve error message *too*
much). Getting clever about what username to use seems more dangerous
than helpful, and besides, it's simple enough simply to say "initdb needs
to figure out your user somehow" and leave it at that. How often do you
run initdb anyway?
The first sounds good, but I wonder what the odds are of
> picking up the wrong username. On my platform, for example, su'ing
> to the postgres account does *not* change LOGNAME, which would mean
> initdb would pick the wrong thing. Maybe what we need is just a
> better error message ("USER environment variable is not set, please
> set it or provide -u switch" ...)