The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference: 2333
Logged by: kevin barnes
Email address: vinbarnes (AT) gmail (DOT) com
PostgreSQL version: 8.1
Operating system: ubuntu 5.10
Description: dropdb ignores the database name argument
Details:

In the 8.1 release on Unbuntu 5.10 there is an error with the dropdb command
in /usr/bin. The error manifests itself by not respecting the DBNAME
argument. It assumes that you want to connect to a database named 'postgres'
and ignores whatever argument you give it. The error returned is:

dropdb: database removal failed: ERROR: database "postgres" does not exist

The error is actually correct, because I do not have a database named
postgres, but the command does not work correctly.

I downgraded through apt-get to 8.0 and dropdb works as expected. I believe
the version I was running was 8.1.3.

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kevin barnes wrote:
I think something strange is happening in your installation. I can not
reproduce your failure.

--
Bruce Momjian http://candle.pha.pa.us
SRA OSS, Inc. http://www.sraoss.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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TIP 2: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster

kevin barnes wrote:

I think what is happening here is that dropdb is trying to connect to
the postgres database to issue the DROP DATABASE command, and fails
because it doesn't exist. I thought it was fixed not long ago to retry
by connecting to template1 if postgres didn't exist; maybe it wasn't
really done and I'm misremembering, or maybe you're using a version
without the fix (and thus you should upgrade).

The obvious workaround is to create a database named postgres.

--
Alvaro Herrera http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
The PostgreSQL Company - Command Prompt, Inc.

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