henrybit/postgresql-pgvector repository overview

docker run --name postgres-pgvector -e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=123456 -e POSTGRES_DB=openmemory -e POSTGRES_USER=postgres -v /data/volumes/postgresql:/var/lib/postgresql -p 5432:5432 -d henrybit/postgresql-pgvector:16

This environment variable is required for you to use the PostgreSQL image. It must not be empty or undefined. This environment variable sets the superuser password for PostgreSQL. The default superuser is defined by the POSTGRES_USER environment variable.

Note 1: The PostgreSQL image sets up trust authentication locally so you may notice a password is not required when connecting from localhost (inside the same container). However, a password will be required if connecting from a different host/container.

Note 2: This variable defines the superuser password in the PostgreSQL instance, as set by the initdb script during initial container startup. It has no effect on the PGPASSWORD environment variable that may be used by the psql client at runtime, as described at https://www.postgresql.org/docs/14/libpq-envars.html⁠. PGPASSWORD, if used, will be specified as a separate environment variable.

This optional environment variable is used in conjunction with POSTGRES_PASSWORD to set a user and its password. This variable will create the specified user with superuser power and a database with the same name. If it is not specified, then the default user of postgres will be used.

Be aware that if this parameter is specified, PostgreSQL will still show The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "postgres" during initialization. This refers to the Linux system user (from /etc/passwd in the image) that the postgres daemon runs as, and as such is unrelated to the POSTGRES_USER option. See the section titled "Arbitrary --user Notes" for more details.

This optional environment variable can be used to define a different name for the default database that is created when the image is first started. If it is not specified, then the value of POSTGRES_USER will be used.

This optional environment variable can be used to send arguments to postgres initdb. The value is a space separated string of arguments as postgres initdb would expect them. This is useful for adding functionality like data page checksums: -e POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS="--data-checksums".

This optional environment variable can be used to define another location for the Postgres transaction log. By default the transaction log is stored in a subdirectory of the main Postgres data folder (PGDATA). Sometimes it can be desireable to store the transaction log in a different directory which may be backed by storage with different performance or reliability characteristics.

Note: on PostgreSQL 9.x, this variable is POSTGRES_INITDB_XLOGDIR (reflecting the changed name of the --xlogdir flag to --waldir in PostgreSQL 10+⁠).

This optional variable can be used to control the auth-method for host connections for all databases, all users, and all addresses. If unspecified then scram-sha-256 password authentication⁠ is used (in 14+; md5 in older releases). On an uninitialized database, this will populate pg_hba.conf via this approximate line:

echo "host all all all $POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD" >> pg_hba.conf
See the PostgreSQL documentation on pg_hba.conf⁠ for more information about possible values and their meanings.

Note 1: It is not recommended to use trust since it allows anyone to connect without a password, even if one is set (like via POSTGRES_PASSWORD). For more information see the PostgreSQL documentation on Trust Authentication⁠.

Note 2: If you set POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD to trust, then POSTGRES_PASSWORD is not required.

Note 3: If you set this to an alternative value (such as scram-sha-256), you might need additional POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS for the database to initialize correctly (such as POSTGRES_INITDB_ARGS=--auth-host=scram-sha-256).

Important Change: the PGDATA environment variable of the image was changed to be version specific in PostgreSQL 18 and above⁠. For 18 it is /var/lib/postgresql/18/docker. Later versions will replace 18 with their respective major version (e.g., /var/lib/postgresql/19/docker for PostgreSQL 19.x). The defined VOLUME was changed in 18 and above to /var/lib/postgresql. Mounts and volumes should be targeted at the updated location. This will allow users upgrading between PostgreSQL major releases to use the faster --link when running pg_upgrade and mounting /var/lib/postgresql.

Users who wish to opt-in to this change on older releases can do so by setting PGDATA explicitly (--env PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/17/docker --volume some-postgres:/var/lib/postgresql). To migrate pre-existing data, adjust the volume's folder structure appropriately first (moving all database files into a PG_MAJOR/docker subdirectory).

Important Note: (for PostgreSQL 17 and below) Mount the data volume at /var/lib/postgresql/data and not at /var/lib/postgresql because mounts at the latter path WILL NOT PERSIST database data when the container is re-created. The Dockerfile that builds the image declares a volume at /var/lib/postgresql/data and if no data volume is mounted at that path then the container runtime will automatically create an anonymous volume⁠ that is not reused across container re-creations. Data will be written to the anonymous volume rather than your intended data volume and won't persist when the container is deleted and re-created.

This (PGDATA) is an environment variable that is not Docker specific. Because the variable is used by the postgres server binary (see the PostgreSQL docs⁠), the entrypoint script takes it into account.