Re: postmaster never finishes starting up, silent to boot

On Tue, 17 Mar 2009, Aaron Glenn wrote:

> Despite configuring postgresql.conf for excessive 'verboseness' nothing
> gets outputted to syslog or the --log specified file.

You shouldn't trust those destinations for getting really unusual errors
starting the server. Change your log_destination temporarily back to just
"stderr" and start the server with a simple "pg_ctl start". Errors will
show up on the terminal. If that works but doesn't tell you anything
interesting about why startup isn't going correctly, try changing
log_min_messages=debug2 ; that will show you a bunch more information
about what's happening.

If you didn't delete the pid file after the crash or the old server is
still holding onto some shared memory/ports, that might be causing your
problem. Another possibility is that you don't have the right permissions
on the copy. Once you get the log output on the screen it should narrow
the possibilities here.

--
* Greg Smith gsmith(at)gregsmith(dot)com http://www.gregsmith.com Baltimore, MD