Re: Debian upgrade and PGSQL pid file

On Tue, Apr 10, 2007 at 06:01:34AM -0400, Tom Allison wrote:
> A while back I threw together a postgresql installation on a computer with
> a RAID disk for performance reasons. I never got it working 100% since it
> was just a quick weekend adventure and I never expected much to come of it.

Firstly, there's a README specifically for Debian in the postgres
packages, I suggest you read it, it has lots of information about the
way Debian has it setup.

> I'm not trying to upgrade the database via debians recent release and ran
> into an error from the debian scripts:
>
> Preparing to replace postgresql-8.1 8.1.5-1 (using
> .../postgresql-8.1_8.1.8-1_i386.deb) ...
> Stopping PostgreSQL 8.1 database server: main* Error: pid file is invalid,
> please manually kill the stale server process.
> failed!

Is there still a server running, or not? If not, delete to pid file.
That should work better.

> ---------------
> I actually have a pid file in both locations:
> /raid/postgresql/postmaster.pid,
> /var/run/postgresql/8.1-main.pid

No, that's normal. One is maintained by the postmaster, the other by
the init script.

> /raid/postgresql/ has a *lot* of files I was expecting to see somewhere
> else (like /etc/postgresql)

How did you create that structure? If you did an initdb then it's
expected, some postgres initdb doesn't know about clusters. If you use
used pg_createcluster I beleive that should have been taken care of. In
either case I think they're harmless (if confusing).

> How should it work and how do I get it there?

If you make sure the server is down, you should just be able to delete
the pid file and upgrade...

Have a nice day,
--
Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog(at)svana(dot)org> http://svana.org/kleptog/
> From each according to his ability. To each according to his ability to litigate.