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I get the message "cannot drop the currently open database" when trying to drop a DB in PostgreSQL, why?

First off, don't do something like:

dropdb -U postgres -W your_db_name

Since that connects to your_db_name, and makes it the active one! (The same applies to dropping the DB from within a command shell loaded using psql -U postgres your_db_name) The way to do it, is without connecting to a DB:

$ psql -U postgres
 postgres=# drop database your_db_name

If that still fails, there might be something else (like an application) with an open connection to the DB. Restart the postgres server and try again.

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