Re: failure on 'pg_ctl stop' command

On 10/11/07, Tena Sakai <tsakai@gallo.ucsf.edu> wrote:
>
>
>
> Hi Everybody,
>
>  I had a failure on stopping postgres.
>  The command I issued was:
>  >> pg_ctl stop -m s
>
>  and its response was:
>  >> waiting for server to shut
> down...............................................................
> failed
>  >> pg_ctl: server does not shut down
>
>  I repeated the same command and the response was identical.
>  I proceeded to issue:
>  >> pg_ctl stop -m f
>
>  and this time it came back with:
>  >> waiting for server to shut down.... done
>  >> server stopped
>
>  Would somebody please tell me what this means?
>  Is it indicative of some trouble?  What can/Should
>  I do to remedy the situation?

Normally this means that you have clients connected to the db while
it's trying to shut down.

On the server, run

ps ax|grep postgres

and look for a client connected in IDLE state.

You can either disconnect all the clients, or use -m f, which will
disconnect them for you.