Add a user for Postgres on Mac

Question

I've had a very difficult time trying to set up a postgres database. I am using Mac OS X 10.9.2.

I am using this tutorial: http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/topics/environment/environment.html

The Postgres section can be found 2/3 of the way down the page.

After installing Homebrew and commanding brew install postgresql

we create a database by:

sudo mkdir -p /usr/local/pgsql/data
sudo chown postgres:postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data
sudo su postgres
initdb -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
createuser `whoami`

When I do

sudo chown postgres:postgres /usr/local/pgsql/data

it returns the error

chown: postgres: illegal user name

I can't seem to find a simple command to add a user - adduser and useradd have returned "command not found", with and without sudo. I am not sure what the problem is. Is there a simple command I can do?

Answer 1

If the username is not existent, you should not have been able to enter a login session using su. MacOS uses a Directory Service to store and keep track of user accounts. Create the user account (and respective group, as the syntax of chown is chown user:group /path/to/file/or/dir) using dscl and dseditgroup prior to attempting to chown files/directories to it:

sudo dscl . create /Groups/postgres
sudo dscl . create /Users/postgres
sudo dseditgroup -o edit -a postgres -t user postgres

More advanced settings (UIDs, Group description and passwords) are possible too.