The other answers were not completely satisfying to me. Here’s what worked for postgresql-9.1 on Xubuntu 12.04.1 LTS.
-
Connect to the default database with user postgres:
sudo -u postgres psql template1
-
Set the password for user postgres, then exit psql (Ctrl-D):
ALTER USER postgres with encrypted password ‘xxxxxxx’;
-
Edit the
pg_hba.conf
file:sudo vim /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/pg_hba.conf
and change “peer” to “md5” on the line concerning postgres:
local all postgres
peermd5To know what version of postgresql you are running, look for the version folder under
/etc/postgresql
. Also, you can use Nano or other editor instead of VIM. -
Restart the database :
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
(Here you can check if it worked with
psql -U postgres
). -
Create a user having the same name as you (to find it, you can type
whoami
):sudo createuser -U postgres -d -e -E -l -P -r -s
<my_name>
The options tell postgresql to create a user that can login, create databases, create new roles, is a superuser, and will have an encrypted password. The really important ones are -P -E, so that you’re asked to type the password that will be encrypted, and -d so that you can do a
createdb
.Beware of passwords: it will first ask you twice the new password (for the new user), repeated, and then once the postgres password (the one specified on step 2).
-
Again, edit the
pg_hba.conf
file (see step 3 above), and change “peer” to “md5” on the line concerning “all” other users:local all all
peermd5 -
Restart (like in step 4), and check that you can login without -U postgres:
psql template1
Note that if you do a mere
psql
, it will fail since it will try to connect you to a default database having the same name as you (i.e.whoami
). template1 is the admin database that is here from the start. -
Now
createdb <dbname>
should work.