3

I am running Yosemite and have had the Postgres.app running with no issues for months. I started the app today and got this error

Could not initialize database cluster.
initdb: could not create directory "I": Permission denied

What could cause this to happen and what do I do to fix it?

jhamm
  • 24,124
  • 39
  • 105
  • 179

1 Answers1

25

This baffled me for ages too. Turns out I had errantly typed while the preferences dialog was open which changed the data directory. Using 'default' fixed my issue.

Preferences

lucygenik
  • 1,698
  • 2
  • 16
  • 18
  • Looks like a bug in the app. – coffee_machine Jan 07 '16 at 07:22
  • Hmm maybe.. but in my case it was a bug in the chair. Although it seems odd that I also typed an 'I'... perhaps it is the result of a common but misfingered shortcut sequence – lucygenik Jan 07 '16 at 20:06
  • 1
    Oh yeah - I got it. If you open the preference panel and hit escape to close it (standard modal behaviour) it autosuggests 'I' – lucygenik Jan 12 '16 at 02:40
  • Thanks a lot. I also typed an "I" which seems suspicious, but lucygenik already explained the problem. Anyway, thanks for letting me avoid n unnecessary search for this silly issue. – Michael Feihstel Jul 14 '16 at 04:57
  • @lucygenik thanks man. I seem more a bug, how come everyone typing same character? – Volatil3 Dec 17 '16 at 05:39
  • As in my earlier comment I think it's because it's a natural reflex to hit escape to close the modal and when you do that it injects the | – lucygenik Dec 18 '16 at 21:02