postmaster.pid not visible

<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tr><td style="font: inherit;" valign="top">Hi All, I installed
PostgreSQL-8.3.1on my Suse Linux machine, it went on fine without any problems and I was able to create and access the
database,even I was able to start, restart and check the status of the service. Since it is my local machine and people
areremotly connecting to the database on my local machine, I used to keep the machine up and running. Today I came and
checkedand It was telling me that the service of postgres is not running, so I went and checked the postmaster.pid file
itwas not in the data folder, but I was able to get to the psql prompt and execute standard sql statements, even people
wereable to connect remotly and access the databse on my machine. The only difficult that I was facing was that I was
unableto restart or stop the service. So with the help of the ps -ef | grep postgres command I was able to trace out
thepid and then manually kill the pid with the kill -9 command, after this I was able to restart, stop or check the
statusof the service. Can anyone throw light on why the postmaster.pid was not visible, the other intresting factor
thatI observed was that the postgres service was running on the 5432 port this was visible from the /tmp location. Also
Iwould like to know if theer is any other alternative with which i can restart the service and retain the
postmaster.pidfile. Thanks in advance Regards Cinu</td></tr></table><br /><hr size="1" /> Unlimited freedom, unlimited
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