This is my -- hopefully sufficiently portable -- attempt at cleaning out

initdb. No more obscure dependencies on environment variables or paths.
It
now finds the templates and the right postgres itself (with cmd line
options as fallback). It also no longer depends on $USER (su safe), and
doesn't advertise that --username allows you to install the db as a
different user, since that doesn't work anyway. Also, recovery and
cleanup
on all errors. Consistent options, clearer documentation.

Please take a look at this and adopt it if you feel it's safe enough. I
have simulated all the stupid circumstances I could think of, but you
never know with shell scripts.

Oh yeah, you can give the postgres user a default password now.

--
Peter Eisentraut                  Sernanders väg 10:115