Re: Problems Restarting PostgreSQL Daemon

On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Tom Lane wrote:

> If you're certain there's no postmaster running, it's safe to remove
> postmaster.pid. However you really shouldn't have to; the postmaster is
> generally able to figure out whether a pidfile is live or not.

Tom,

   I thought the postmaster knew what was current and what needed to be
replaced, but the process ID in the pidfile did not exist.

> The "invalid data" bit is interesting though.  It looks like pg_ctl would
> produce that error if the pidfile exists but is empty when it looks.  This
> seems like a race condition hazard, though the odds of hitting it are
> tiny.  What's in the file exactly?

   I deleted the .pid, but still could not get the postmaster running. Then I
'touched' the name so I had an empty file. Made no difference. While pg_ctl
tells me the server is starting, there is no /tmp/.s.PGSQL*, no pidfile, and
no postmaster process.

   In the past I've managed to start the postmaster daemon manually, but
today I seem to have it FUBARed.

Rich

--
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |  Integrity            Credibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |            Innovation
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