Mischa Sandberg <mischa_sandberg(at)telus(dot)net> writes:
>> You could sleep for a second or so *before* you start looking for
>> the pidfile.
> The systems are under erratic load, due to concurrent
> cpu and diskio spikes around start-up time.
> 1-2 secs is not enough to be a guarantee :-(
Well, forget pg_ctl and just start the postmaster directly, so that
your script knows its PID. Then you could keep an eye on whether the
PID still exists.
regards, tom lane