Postgres database has no roles

Question

I recently installed postgres version 9.3.5 on osx 10.10 and I am unable to connect to it with psql . I started the server as my own user as follows:

jestep$ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start

With pg_ctl status I confirmed the server was running. However I cannot connect to the server regardless of what username I try.

jestep$ psql
psql: FATAL:  role "jestep" does not exist
jestep$ psql -U postgres
psql: FATAL:  role "postgres" does not exist
jestep$ psql -U _postgres
psql: FATAL:  role "_postgres" does not exist
jestep$ psql -U admin
psql: FATAL:  role "admin" does not exist
jestep$ psql -U root
psql: FATAL:  role "root" does not exist

Here are the contents of my pg_hba.conf file:

# TYPE  DATABASE        USER            ADDRESS                 METHOD

# "local" is for Unix domain socket connections only
local   all             all                                     trust
# IPv4 local connections:
host    all             all             127.0.0.1/32            trust
# IPv6 local connections:
host    all             all             ::1/128                 trust

I have checked in /etc/passwd , and there is no user called postgres , though there is _postgres .

This happened to me once before on Ubuntu and I actually had to uninstall postgres and all extensions, reinstall them, and initialize a completely new database. Is there any less drastic approach I can take?

Answer 1

Solved this on @CraigRinger's advice by running a fresh initdb in a new directory.

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Note: Deleting your data dir and running a new initdb will destroy all existing data, so it's not something you should do if there's anything in your PostgreSQL install you care about.