Tatsuhito Kasahara <kasahara.tatsuhito@oss.ntt.co.jp> writes:
> If a user who perform "pg_ctl -w start" does not have authority to connect
> postgres-database, pg_ctl will return 1 and show "could not start server" message.
pg_ctl is already set up to recognize bad-password errors as meaning the
postmaster is up. You didn't say what auth method you are using, but
I'd think the right fix is to make it recognize other types of
authentication failures as well.
regards, tom lane