Re: Problems With New Installation

Quoting Rich Shepard <rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com>:

> I installed 8.3.5 on my notebook so that I can run a business application.
> I used the Slackware package approach and everything seems to be in place,
> but there is no /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 or associated lock file.
>
> Starting the server produces a message that the PostgreSQL daemon is
> already running. Stopping the server produces the message that there's no
> directory so it's logging in with HOME=/, and there's an invalid
> postmaster.pid.
>
> Restarting postgres does not create the /tmp socket and lock. The user
> 'postgres' exists and has the home directory of /home/postgres. My Google
> searches and reading through the Douglas^2 book gives me no clues.
>
> What do I do to properly start/stop the postmaster?
>
> Rich
>
> --
> Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | Integrity Credibility
> Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. | Innovation
> <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
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Here's a couple of things to look for:

1. Do you have to do an "initdb"? Some distros do that automatically,
and some don't. When I was running Gentoo, I had to do an extra
"configure" step after the install to get that to happen. The
"configure" is automatic on openSUSE 11.1 when you install, and I
think that's true for Debian-based distros as well. Try "man initdb".
On openSUSE, the PostgreSQL files default to "/var/lib/pgsql" and
belong to "postgres:postgres". In there, you'll see a "backups"
directory and a "data" directory, and the configuration files are in
the "data" directory. On my system, there's an "initlog" which has all
the logs from when "initdb" was run.

2. If "initdb" has been done, is there an "/etc/init.d/postgresql"
file? What happens if you do "/etc/init.d/postgresql restart"? That's
how I restart PostgreSQL. Also, there's undoubtedly a way you can get
it to start automatically at boot time when you enter your default run
level. I used the GUI runlevel editing tool. :)

3. If that doesn't work, try a "man pg_ctl". That's the command that
is designed to start and stop and reload. It has some environment
variables that need to be set so it knows where "initdb" put the
database.

One thing that might help (from the Douglas^2 book) would be to do
"sudo su - postgres" and see which command-line utilities actually
function. There are also some settings in "postgresql.conf" and
"pg_hba.conf" you might need to set so that when the postmaster is
running, you have permissions to execute stuff.