Change encoding in PostgreSQL 9.1

Question

I have the following databases

sudo -u postgres psql -c "\list"

                             List of databases
   Name    |  Owner   | Encoding | Collate | Ctype |   Access privileges   
-----------+----------+----------+---------+-------+-----------------------
 postgres  | postgres | LATIN1   | en_US   | en_US | 
 template0 | postgres | LATIN1   | en_US   | en_US | =c/postgres          +
           |          |          |         |       | postgres=CTc/postgres
 template1 | postgres | LATIN1   | en_US   | en_US | =c/postgres          +
           |          |          |         |       | postgres=CTc/postgres
(3 rows)

How can I change encoding from LATIN1 to UTF8 in the database template1 or template0?

Answer 1

Since you don't appear to have any actual data here, just shutdown and delete the cluster (server and set of databases) and re-create it. Which operating system are you using? The standard PostgreSQL command to create a new cluster is initdb, but on Debian/Ubuntu et al you'd typically use pg_createcluster

See also How do you change the character encoding of a postgres database?

Although you can try to tweak the encodings, it's not recommended. Even though I suggested it in that linked question, if you had data with latin1 characters here, you'd need to recode them to utf-8.