"Phillip Smith" <phillip.smith@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > My bad - is has the shell, but as you say, the home > directory is /dev/null > > niutil -destroyval -u admin . /users/postgres home > /dev/null niutil -appendprop -u admin . /users/postgres > home /Library/postgreSQL8 > > Once again, use at your own risk! Do let us know if it > worked or not. Hi Phillip, I just used NetInfo Manager itself to make the change. Question is, though: how will I know if it's worked? In my earlier email I said I had been unable to login as postgres until I'd added a shell for that user. In fact I still cannot login as postgres, being refused each time after I try to enter a password--and yes, I did use NetInfo Manager to give postgres a password I knew, seeing as I didn't know the default one. Giving postgres a shell, however, has allowed me to use the form sudo su postgres... When I do this: acorn$ sudo su postgres -c 'pg_ctl start -l logfile -D /Library/PostgreSQL8/data' Password: sh: line 1: logfile: Permission denied server starting terminal seems to say the server has begun, but there is still no sign of the server either in Activity Monitor or in being able to use the pg gui client tools to create a user or a database--both say the server is not active, or not accepting tcp/ip on port 5432. The following, however, makes me suspect it's still a problem with initdb: acorn$ postgres postgres cannot access the server configuration file "/Library/PostgreSQL8/data:/postgresql.conf": No such file or directory Surely initdb should have created the configure file? Cheers! Joe