How to customize the configuration file of the official PostgreSQL Docker image?

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With Docker Compose

When working with Docker Compose, you can use command: postgres -c option=value in your docker-compose.yml to configure Postgres.

For example, this makes Postgres log to a file:

command: postgres -c logging_collector=on -c log_destination=stderr -c log_directory=/logs

Adapting Vojtech Vitek’s answer, you can use

command: postgres -c config_file=/etc/postgresql.conf

to change the config file Postgres will use. You’d mount your custom config file with a volume:

volumes:
   - ./customPostgresql.conf:/etc/postgresql.conf

Here’s the docker-compose.yml of my application, showing how to configure Postgres:

# Start the app using docker-compose pull && docker-compose up to make sure you have the latest image
version: '2.1'
services:
  myApp:
    image: registry.gitlab.com/bullbytes/myApp:latest
    networks:
      - myApp-network
  db:
     image: postgres:9.6.1
     # Make Postgres log to a file.
     # More on logging with Postgres: https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/runtime-config-logging.html
     command: postgres -c logging_collector=on -c log_destination=stderr -c log_directory=/logs
     environment:
       # Provide the password via an environment variable. If the variable is unset or empty, use a default password
       # Explanation of this shell feature: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/122845/using-a-b-for-variable-assignment-in-scripts/122848#122848
       - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD:-4WXUms893U6j4GE&Hvk3S*hqcqebFgo!vZi}
     # If on a non-Linux OS, make sure you share the drive used here. Go to Docker's settings -> Shared Drives
     volumes:
       # Persist the data between container invocations
       - postgresVolume:/var/lib/postgresql/data
       - ./logs:/logs
     networks:
       myApp-network:
         # Our application can communicate with the database using this hostname
         aliases:
           - postgresForMyApp
networks:
  myApp-network:
    driver: bridge
# Creates a named volume to persist our data. When on a non-Linux OS, the volume's data will be in the Docker VM
# (e.g., MobyLinuxVM) in /var/lib/docker/volumes/
volumes:
  postgresVolume:

Permission to write to the log directory

Note that when on Linux, the log directory on the host must have the right permissions.
Otherwise you’ll get the slightly misleading error

FATAL: could not open log file
“/logs/postgresql-2017-02-04_115222.log”: Permission denied

I say misleading, since the error message suggests that the directory in the container has the wrong permission, when in reality the directory on the host doesn’t permit writing.

To fix this, I set the correct permissions on the host using

chgroup ./logs docker && chmod 770 ./logs

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