Container doesn't start with empty POSTGRES_PASSWORD: initdb: error: password file "/dev/fd/63" is empty

[stanhu]

Likely due to #1024, the container no longer starts:

$ docker run -e POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD=trust --name postgres-test postgres:12
********************************************************************************
WARNING: POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD has been set to "trust". This will allow
         anyone with access to the Postgres port to access your database without
         a password, even if POSTGRES_PASSWORD is set. See PostgreSQL
         documentation about "trust":
         https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/auth-trust.html
         In Docker's default configuration, this is effectively any other
         container on the same system.

         It is not recommended to use POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD=trust. Replace
         it with "-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password" instead to set a password in
         "docker run".
********************************************************************************
initdb: error: password file "/dev/fd/63" is empty
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "postgres".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.utf8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Data page checksums are disabled.

However, it works if POSTGRES_PASSWORD is specified.

Apparently /dev/fd/63 is the pipe: https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/156088

[stanhu]

On an older image, I see initdb: warning: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections:

$ docker run -e POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD=trust --name postgres-test 8a31769da129
********************************************************************************
WARNING: POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD has been set to "trust". This will allow
         anyone with access to the Postgres port to access your database without
         a password, even if POSTGRES_PASSWORD is set. See PostgreSQL
         documentation about "trust":
         https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/auth-trust.html
         In Docker's default configuration, this is effectively any other
         container on the same system.

         It is not recommended to use POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD=trust. Replace
         it with "-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password" instead to set a password in
         "docker run".
********************************************************************************
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "postgres".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.utf8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Data page checksums are disabled.

fixing permissions on existing directory /var/lib/postgresql/data ... ok
creating subdirectories ... ok
selecting dynamic shared memory implementation ... posix
selecting default max_connections ... 100
selecting default shared_buffers ... 128MB
selecting default time zone ... Etc/UTC
creating configuration files ... ok
running bootstrap script ... ok
performing post-bootstrap initialization ... ok
syncing data to disk ... initdb: warning: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections
You can change this by editing pg_hba.conf or using the option -A, or
--auth-local and --auth-host, the next time you run initdb.
ok


Success. You can now start the database server using:

    pg_ctl -D /var/lib/postgresql/data -l logfile start

waiting for server to start....2022-12-22 21:16:09.522 UTC [49] LOG:  starting PostgreSQL 12.12 (Debian 12.12-1.pgdg110+1) on x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, compiled by gcc (Debian 10.2.1-6) 10.2.1 20210110, 64-bit
2022-12-22 21:16:09.525 UTC [49] LOG:  listening on Unix socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"
2022-12-22 21:16:09.549 UTC [50] LOG:  database system was shut down at 2022-12-22 21:16:09 UTC
2022-12-22 21:16:09.556 UTC [49] LOG:  database system is ready to accept connections
 done
server started

[bericp1]

Yeah this is happening to us too. The reason is because echo implicitly included a newline in its output whereas printf doesn't. This line is the culprit:

7a852f4#diff-79738685a656fe6b25061bb14181442210b599f746faeaba408a2401de45038aR91

Before this commit, you could not have the env variable set and it would be fine because postgres would get a nearly empty file that just contains a \n. After this commit if you don't have it set, postgres gets an actually empty file and initdb fails.

Edit: We're working around it by setting POSTGRES_PASSWORD to a dummy value for the time being.