Scripts in the /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d folder are ignored

Question

I need to configure Postogres with some SQL commands, but everything I put in the /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d folder doesn't get executed. I'm using the postgres:9.6 image.

My Dockerfile is as follows:

FROM postgres:9.6

COPY init.sql /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/
USER root
RUN chown postgres:postgres /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init.sql
ENTRYPOINT ["docker-entrypoint.sh"]
CMD ["postgres"]

I tried multiple commands in init.sql, for example:

CREATE DATABASE db_name;

Finally, this is the part of the yaml file that concerns the database.

db:
    image: postgres-am
    ports:
      - target: 5432
        published: 5432
        protocol: tcp
        mode: host

    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "postgres"
      PGDATA: "/var/lib/postgresql/data/pgdata"

    volumes:
      - db_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

Answer 1

Postgres only initializes the database if no database is found, when the container starts. Since you have a volume mapping on the database directory, chances are that a database already exists.

If you delete the db_data volume and start the container, postgres will see that there isn't a database and then it'll initialize one for you using the scripts in docker-entrypoint-initdb.d .