Ubuntu Resolute stemcell: Missing "postgres-17/bin/initdb" script

[jochenehret]

We've tried to deploy postgres-release 56.0.4 on the new bosh-aws-xen-hvm-ubuntu-resolute v0.148 stemcell. Postgres cannot start because the "initdb" script is missing:

database/3353d476-979d-48a8-87d1-605647ca6739:/var/vcap/sys/log/postgres# cat pre-start.stderr.log                                        
[2026-09-18T07:28:44.362490892Z] 5841 -bash: line 1: /var/vcap/packages/postgres-17/bin/initdb: No such file or directory

It's probably related to the ICU library paths. Can you please check?

[mkocher]

This is indeed caused by the dropped libicu-dev package in Resolute. We hit this with pxc-release as well, but mysql has an embedded libicu that we switched to using. Postgres does not embed a copy of libicu. @abg pointed me to this blog post which was quite helpful in understanding. After reading it I'm inclined to not add libicu to the stemcell, and instead vendor it in the postgres release.

One note - the packaging scripts start with #!/bin/bash -exu however bosh ignores the shebang line as it executes the scripts via bash -x packaging. The packaging scripts should switch to set -e.

[ZPascal]

This is indeed caused by the dropped libicu-dev package in Resolute. We hit this with pxc-release as well, but mysql has an embedded libicu that we switched to using. Postgres does not embed a copy of libicu. @abg pointed me to this blog post which was quite helpful in understanding. After reading it I'm inclined to not add libicu to the stemcell, and instead vendor it in the postgres release.

One note - the packaging scripts start with #!/bin/bash -exu however bosh ignores the shebang line as it executes the scripts via bash -x packaging. The packaging scripts should switch to set -e.

I agree, we should vendor the libicu package inside the PostgreSQL release. I'll prepare a draft PR to handle the case.