InitDB uses in Postgresql

 It will create a new PostgreSQL cluster.

• In Postgres cluster is a collection of databases that are managed by a single cluster.
• It will create the data directories in which the database data will live, generating the shared catalog tables and creating default databases.

* Postgresql — used for connections

* template 0 — user connection is not allowed and maintain DB consistency

* template 1 — When we creating a database will take an exact copy of template1.

• In case the user doesn’t have permission on the data directory will create an empty directory.
• initdb initializes the database cluster with default locale and character set encoding. This character set encoding, collation order (LC_COLLATE) and character set classes (LC_CTYPE, e.g., upper, lower, digit) can be set separately for a database when it is created. initdb determines those settings for the template1 database, which will serve as the default for all other databases.
• Before the Initdb initialises, the data directory was empty.

[postgres@prime]$cd /u01/pgdatabase/data[postgres@prime data]$ ls -lrthtotal of 0

• Now we are going to execute the initdb -D “ path ”, here -D specifies data directory location

postgres@prime data]$ /u01/postgresql-10.0/bin/initdb -D /u01/pgdatabase/data

• Once the initdb initialised, to verify the data directory.

[postgres@prime data]$ ls -lrthtotal 124K-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 88 Oct 30 2019 postgresql.auto.conf-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 3 Oct 30 2019 PG_VERSIONdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_twophasedrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_tblspcdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_snapshotsdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_serialdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_replslotdrwx------ 4 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_multixact-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 1.6K Oct 30 2019 pg_ident.conf-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 4.5K Oct 30 2019 pg_hba.confdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_dynshmemdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_commit_tsdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_xactdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Oct 30 2019 pg_subtrans-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 23K Feb 14 22:17 postgresql.confdrwx------ 11 postgres postgres 4.0K Feb 14 22:43 basedrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Feb 14 22:44 pg_stat-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 769 Feb 14 22:46 logfiledrwx------ 3 postgres postgres 4.0K Mar 2 11:40 pg_wal-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 62 Mar 7 13:38 postmaster.optsdrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Mar 7 13:38 pg_notify-rw------- 1 postgres postgres 78 Mar 7 13:38 postmaster.piddrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Mar 7 13:46 globaldrwx------ 4 postgres postgres 4.0K Mar 7 15:43 pg_logicaldrwx------ 2 postgres postgres 4.0K Mar 8 11:33 pg_stat_tmp

Here the important files is created automatically i.e  postgresql.conf, pg_hba.conf,base,pg_tblspc ..etc

Summary:

The initdb use to create the data directories and default databases as well. By using initdb we can create multiple clusters on the same machine with the different directory path.