Re: "pg_ctl: the PID file ... is empty" at end of make check

[ blast from the past dept. ]

Thomas Munro <thomas(dot)munro(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
> On Thu, Nov 29, 2018 at 3:30 AM Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us> wrote:
>> Thomas Munro <thomas(dot)munro(at)enterprisedb(dot)com> writes:
>>> https://github.com/macdice/unlinktest

>> Bleah. But you can do better than ask whether it's a bug: you can
>> quote POSIX:
>> ...
>> Not a lot of wiggle room there.

> Agreed. Secret non-shareable bug report filed. Fingers crossed.

Since that conversation, longfin has shown the same symptom
just once more:

longfin | REL_11_STABLE | 2019-07-28 22:29:03 | recoveryCheck | waiting for ser
ver to shut down......pg_ctl: the PID file "/Users/buildfarm/bf-data/REL_11_STAB
LE/pgsql.build/src/test/recovery/tmp_check/t_001_stream_rep_standby_2_data/pgdat
a/postmaster.pid" is empty

and now prairiedog has shown it too:

https://buildfarm.postgresql.org/cgi-bin/show_log.pl?nm=prairiedog&dt=2019-10-14%2021%3A45%3A47

which is positively fascinating, because prairiedog is running a
bronze-age version of macOS that surely never heard of APFS.
So this makes it look like this is a basic macOS bug that's not
as filesystem-dependent as one might think.

Trawling the buildfarm database finds no other matches in the last year,
so whatever it is, it's pretty darn improbable.

Did you ever get any reaction to that bug report?

regards, tom lane