Re: it refuses to go down...

> > did you try pg_ctl -m immediate stop ???
>
> I just did, and it worked.
>
> $ pg_ctl stop -m immediate
> waiting for server to shut down.... done
> server stopped

I'd be careful about shutting down using "immediate" mode. It forces
the database into recovery mode.

Your problem could be that one or two connections are in a weird state
and even "fast" stopping can't kill them. Next time you have to
restart the server, you should check on the status of connections and
see if any are in a weird state. I had to deal with this recently
where the status was "notify interrupt" and I couldn't even stop fast.
I had to change some application code, but not much.

Just run "ps ax | grep post" (or whatever options you like to give ps
to show all processes) to filter out postgres processes. A connection
entry will look like like.

[pid] ? Ss 0:00 postgres: [user] [database] [client] [status]

Peter