psql attempts to connect to nonexistent database

[korydraughn]

Bug

This was seen on the dev branch.

The following line assumes a database exists by the name of $IRODS_ICAT_DBUSER. If that database does not exist, an error will occur and the container will exit.

irods-docker/docker/docker-entrypoint.sh

Lines 51 to 52 in 507048e

	if [ "$( psql -h $IRODS_ICAT_DBSERVER -p $IRODS_ICAT_DBPORT -U $IRODS_ICAT_DBUSER \
	-XtAc "SELECT 1 FROM pg_database WHERE datname='$IRODS_ICAT_DBNAME'" )" = '1' ]

The error output will look similar to the following:

catalog-1   | 2024-12-10 16:47:54.126 UTC [85] FATAL:  database "irods" does not exist               
provider-1  | psql: error: FATAL:  database "irods" does not exist                                   
provider-1  | Create iCAT database                                                                   
provider-1  | Password:                                                                              
provider-1  | createdb: error: database creation failed: ERROR:  permission denied to create database
catalog-1   | 2024-12-10 16:47:54.194 UTC [86] ERROR:  permission denied to create database          

To fix this, an existing database must be passed to psql. template1 seems like a decent option (see comments on this stackoverflow answer).

This situation can be reproduced by pointing the image to a new postgres database.

[mikkonie]

Good catch. I've never ran into this myself, probably because we always initialize the postgres container with POSTGRES_DB in our Docker Compose network?

[korydraughn]

I suspect your compose project is designed such that this isn't something anyone has to worry about. The good thing is that this is trivial to fix.

I think part of the reason for this happening is due to how I launched the postgres database. I used this:

# From docker-compose.yml

catalog:                                                                          
    build:                                                                        
        context: irods_catalog
    environment:
        - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=irods
    restart: always

# From irods_catalog/Dockerfile

FROM postgres:14                                                
                                                               
COPY init-user-db.sh /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/init-user-db.sh

# From irods_catalog/init-user-db.sh

#!/bin/bash

psql -v ON_ERROR_STOP=1 --username "$POSTGRES_USER" --dbname "$POSTGRES_DB" <<-EOSQL
    CREATE DATABASE "ICAT";
    CREATE USER irods WITH PASSWORD 'irods';
    GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE "ICAT" to irods;
EOSQL