Daniel Futerman wrote: > I'm trying to develop an automated PostgreSQL installer for Windows that > uses a silent install of PostgreSQL and batch scripts to initialise the > database cluster (i.e. run initdb) and start/stop the db server. The > install shouldn't install as a service, so initdb needs to be run manually. > > The problem I'm having is that initdb cannot be run as an Administrator > user, so I wrote a script that creates a new limited Windows user and I > now want to run initdb using this user, but while still logged in as the > Administrator user. Actually, in 8.3 (at least, I can't remember if it was in 8.2 as well), you *can* run it as admin in a lot of cases. It will drop privileges though, so it can't use the admin permissions. That said, using a separate account is still best practice. > I've looked at using the RUNAS comand, but the user password has to be > inserted manually when using this. I've also tried to pipe in the > password using echo *** | RUNAS... where *** is the password, but this > doesn't seem to work. > > I know there are some apps out there that function as alternatives to > RUNAS but some of them require licences, and I'm looking for a > distributable solution. Look at psexec from Microsoft (former sysinternals). http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897553.aspx You'll have to verify what the license says, but given that it's free and comes from the guys that make Windows, it seems reasonable that it should be doable. > How does the PostgreSQL installer work around this when a new limited > user can be specified when installing as a service? The installer uses direct Win32 API functions to launch the process as a different user. //Magnus
