diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
index 2d1f3ce..502a8f6 100644
--- a/README.md
+++ b/README.md
@@ -99,7 +99,10 @@ These are simple steps using a single container.
 
 ### Manually create needed postgres databases
 
-This is still necessary after `docker-compose up` to avoid
+docker-compose now runs a db init script, but this information is useful for 
+debugging/manual work.
+
+~~This is still necessary after `docker-compose up` to avoid~~
 
     [error] failed to initialize database, got error failed to connect to
     `user=exampleuser database=server_db`: 172.25.0.3:5432 (postgres): server
@@ -122,7 +125,7 @@ The steps:
     # List all dbs
     \l
 
-To run pgmin, the minimal go/postgres test part of this repository:
+### To run pgmin, the minimal go/postgres test part of this repository
 
 1.  Run pgmin
 
diff --git a/docker-compose.yml b/docker-compose.yml
index 3620c1a..55957eb 100644
--- a/docker-compose.yml
+++ b/docker-compose.yml
@@ -9,7 +9,8 @@ services:
       POSTGRES_PASSWORD: examplepass
       POSTGRES_DB: exampledb
     volumes:
-      - postgres_data:/Users/hohn/var/lib/postgresql/data
+      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data
+      - ./postgres-init-scripts:/docker-entrypoint-initdb.d
     ports:
       - "5432:5432" # Exposing PostgreSQL to the host
     expose:
@@ -38,7 +39,7 @@ services:
     container_name: server
     command: sh -c "apt-get update && apt-get install -y curl && tail -f /dev/null"
     ports:
-      - "8080:80" # Exposing port 80 inside the container as port 8080 on the host
+      - "8080:8080" 
     volumes:
       - /Users/hohn/work-gh/mrva/mrvacommander:/mrva/mrvacommander
     depends_on:
diff --git a/postgres-init-scripts/dbinit.sh b/postgres-init-scripts/dbinit.sh
new file mode 100755
index 0000000..37b058d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/postgres-init-scripts/dbinit.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,8 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+set -e
+
+psql -v ON_ERROR_STOP=1 --username "$POSTGRES_USER" --dbname "$POSTGRES_DB" <<-EOSQL
+    SELECT 'CREATE DATABASE server_db' WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT FROM pg_database WHERE datname = 'server_db')\gexec
+    SELECT 'CREATE DATABASE querypack_db' WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT FROM pg_database WHERE datname = 'querypack_db')\gexec
+    SELECT 'CREATE DATABASE qldb_db' WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT FROM pg_database WHERE datname = 'qldb_db')\gexec
+EOSQL