Rake db:create fails to connect to server: No such file or directory

Question

I'm trying to upload a rails app to heroku and I'm running into problems to change my app from sqlite3 to postgres, mainly when I run rake db:create I get:

could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

This is what my database.yml looks like:

default: &default
  adapter: postgresql
  pool: 5
  timeout: 5000

development:
  <<: *default
  database: anagram_development

# Warning: The database defined as "test" will be erased and
# re-generated from your development database when you run "rake".
# Do not set this db to the same as development or production.
test:
  <<: *default
  database: anagram_test

production:
  <<: *default
  database: anagram_production

Answer 1

Do you have postgresql installed locally? If so, double check that it's running. Your database.yml file is also missing some required information to connect to a postgres database. You need to provide username, password and hostname.

Here's an example of mine which connects to a local postgres db:

development:
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  database: app_development
  pool: 10
  username: <%= %x(whoami) %>
  password:

For heroku/production, you can use the following:

production:
  url: <%= ENV['DATABASE_URL'] %>
  pool: <%= ENV['DB_POOL'] || 10 %>