SYNOPSIS
pg_createcluster [options] version nameDESCRIPTION
pg_createcluster creates a new PostgreSQL server cluster (i. e. a collection of databases served by a postmaster(1) instance) and integrates it into the multi-version/multi-cluster architecture of the postgresql-common package.
Every cluster is uniquely identified by its version and name. The name can be
arbitrary. The default cluster that is created on installation of a server
package is
main
. However, you might wish to create other clusters for
testing, with other superusers, a cluster for each user on a shared server,
etc.
pg_createcluster
will abort with an error if you try to create a
cluster with a name that already exists for that version.
Given a major PostgreSQL version (like ``8.2'' or ``8.3'') and a cluster
name, it creates the necessary configuration files in
/etc/postgresql/
version
/
name
/
; in particular these are
postgresql.conf
,
pg_ident.conf
,
pg_hba.conf
, a postgresql-common
specific configuration file
start.conf
(see STARTUP CONTROL below),
pg_ctl.conf
, and a symbolic link
log
which points to the log file (by
default,
/var/log/postgresql/postgresql-
version
-
name
.log
).
postgresql.conf
is automatically adapted to use the next available port, i.
e. the first port (starting from 5432) which is not yet used by an already
existing cluster.
If the data directory does not yet exist, PostgreSQL's initdb(1) command is
used to generate a new cluster structure. If the data directory already exists,
it is integrated into the postgresql-common structure by moving the
configuration file and setting the data_directory option. Please note that this
only works for data directories which were created directly with initdb, i.
e. all the configuration files (
postgresql.conf
etc.) must be present in the
data directory.
If a custom socket directory is given and it does not exist, it is created.
If the log file does not exist, it is created. In any case the permissions are
adjusted to allow write access to the cluster owner. Please note that
postgresql.conf
can be customized to specify
log_directory
and/or
log_filename
; if at least one of these options is present, then the symbolic
link
log
in the cluster configuration directory is ignored.
If the default snakeoil SSL certificate exists
(
/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
and
/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
), this program creates symlinks to
these files in the data directory (
server.crt
and
server.key
) and enables
SSL for that cluster (option ssl in
postgresql.conf
). Therefore all
clusters will use the same SSL certificate by default. Of course you can
replace these symlinks with a cluster specific certificate.
OPTIONS
- -u user, --user=user
- Set the user who owns the cluster and becomes the database superuser to the given name or uid. By default, this is the user postgres. A cluster must not be owned by root.
- -g group, --group=group
- Change the group of the cluster related data files. By default this will be the primary group of the database owner.
- -d dir, --datadir=dir
-
Explicitly set the data directory path, which is used to store all the actual
databases and tables. This will become quite big (easily in the order of five
times the amount of actual data stored in the cluster). Defaults to
/var/lib/postgresql/
version /
cluster. - -s dir, --socketdir=dir
-
Explicitly set the directory where the postmaster(1) server stores the Unix
socket for local connections. Defaults to
/var/run/postgresql/
for clusters owned by the user postgres, and /tmp
for clusters owned by other users. Please be aware that /tmp
is an unsafe directory since everybody can create a socket there and impersonate the database server. If the given directory does not exist, it is created with appropriate permissions. - -l path, --logfile=path
-
Explicitly set the path for the postmaster(1) server log file. Defaults to
/var/log/postgresql/postgresql-
version -
cluster .log
. - --locale=locale
- Set the default locale for the database cluster. If this option is not specified, the locale is inherited from the environment that pg_createcluster runs in.
- --lc-collate=locale
- --lc-ctype=locale
- --lc-messages=locale
- --lc-monetary=locale
- --lc-numeric=locale
- --lc-time=locale
- Like --locale, but only sets the locale in the specified category.
- -e encoding, --encoding=encoding
-
Select the encoding of the template database. This will also be the default
encoding of any database you create later, unless you override it there. The
default is derived from the locale, or SQL_ASCII if that does not work. The
character sets supported by the PostgreSQL server are described in the
documentation.
Note: It is not recommended to set this option directly! Set the locale instead.
- -p port, --port=port
- Select the port the new cluster listens on (for the Unix socket and the TCP port); this must be a number between 1024 and 65535, since PostgreSQL does not run as root and thus needs an unprivileged port number. By default the next free port starting from 5432 is assigned.
- --start
-
Immediately start a server for the cluster after creating it (i. e. call
pg_ctlcluster
version cluster start
on it). By default, the cluster is not started. - --start-conf=auto|manual|disabled
-
Set the initial value in the
start.conf
configuration file. See STARTUP CONTROL below. By default, auto is used, which means that the cluster is handled by /etc/init.d/postgresql
, i. e. starts and stops automatically on system boot.
STARTUP CONTROL
The start.conffile in the cluster configuration directory controls the start/stop behavior of that cluster's postmaster process. The file can contain comment lines (started with '#'), empty lines, and must have exactly one line with one of the following keywords:
- auto
- The postmaster process is started/stopped automatically in the init script. This is also the default if the file is missing.
- manual
- The postmaster process is not handled by the init script, but manually controlling the cluster with pg_ctlcluster(1) is permitted.
- disabled
-
Neither the init script nor pg_ctlcluster(1) are permitted to start/stop the
cluster. Please be aware that this will not stop the cluster owner from calling
lower level tools to control the postmaster process; this option is only meant
to prevent accidents during maintenance, not more.
The pg_ctl.conf
file in the cluster configuration directory can contain additional options passed to pg_ctl of that cluster.