django test app error - Got an error creating the test database: permission denied to create database

Question

When I try to test any app with command (I noticed it when I tried to deploy myproject using fabric, which uses this command):

python manage.py test appname

I get this error:

Creating test database for alias 'default'...
Got an error creating the test database: permission denied to create database

Type 'yes' if you would like to try deleting the test database 'test_finance', or 'no' to cancel

syncdb command seems to work. My database settings in settings.py:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2', # Add 'postgresql_psycopg2', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'oracle'.
        'NAME': 'finance',                      # Or path to database file if using sqlite3.
        'USER': 'django',                      # Not used with sqlite3.
        'PASSWORD': 'mydb123',                  # Not used with sqlite3.
        'HOST': '127.0.0.1',                      # Set to empty string for localhost. Not used with sqlite3.
        'PORT': '',                      # Set to empty string for default. Not used with sqlite3.
    }
}

Answer 1

When Django runs the test suite, it creates a new database, in your case test_finance. The postgres user with username django does not have permission to create a database, hence the error message.

When you run migrate or syncdb, Django does not try to create the finance database, so you don't get any errors.

You can add the createdb permission to the django user by running the following command in the postgres shell as a superuser (hat tip to this stack overflow answer).

=> ALTER USER django CREATEDB;

Note: The username used in the ALTER USER <username> CREATEDB; command needs to match the database user in your Django settings files. In this case, the original poster, had the user as django the above answer.