Re: Couldn't start postgres, got no logging, ran postgres manually for info-- help?

I ran:

pg_ctlcluster 9.1 main start

Received:

The PostgreSQL server failed to start. Please check the log output.

But, hey, in /var/log/postgresql, there was absolutely no logging. Nothing. After some googling, I tried:

usr/lib/postgresql/9.1/bin/postgres -D /data/postgresql/9.1/main -c config_file=/etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf 

From the command line, which spit out to the terminal:

2013-07-12 02:04:05 GMT [30091]: [1-1] FATAL:  data directory "/data/postgresql/9.1/main" has group or world access

OK, so where the heck did this error message go when I was running pg_ctlcluster? It would have saved me a lot of time.

By default pg_ctlcluster script redirects postmaster's stderr into /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-9.1-main.log.
This works only if log_destination is stderr and logging_collector is disabled, else the logs are stored where configured by log_destination, log_filename and log_directory in your postgresql.conf file.

Advice is to look into your postgresql.conf how (and if) logging is configured.

Regards,
Giuseppe.

-- 
Giuseppe Broccolo - 2ndQuadrant Italy
PostgreSQL Training, Services and Support
giuseppe.broccolo@2ndQuadrant.it | www.2ndQuadrant.it