Re: FATAL: the database system is starting up

On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 5:46 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott(dot)marlowe(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 6:09 PM, patrick keshishian <pkeshish(at)gmail(dot)com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Oct 26, 2011 at 4:49 PM, William E. Moreno A.
>> <wmoreno3(at)yahoo(dot)com> wrote:
>>> Solution: http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-general/2007-12/msg01339.php
>>> Solution: Message-id: <476D6DE1(dot)4050600(at)latnet(dot)lv>
>>> <text/plain>
>>>
>>> Problem: FATAL:  the database system is starting up
>>>
>>> Solved:   change postgresql_flags in /etc/rc.conf to: postgresql_flags="-s -m fast" or postgresql_flags="-s -m smart"
>>
>> interesting enough, got bit by this recently. Our set up does not have
>> a "-w" option. During upgrades we "cycle" our PostgreSQL daemon. We
>> had to change the "pg_ctl stop" command to "-mimmediate" because
>> during upgrades we would find that someone had an abandoned psql shell
>> running for days and that would halt our upgrade script.
>>
>> Adding "-m immediate" for shutdown seemed like a logical choice to get
>> around this sort of a "procedural" issue(s).
>
> didn't -m fast work?

I forget now why "-m fast" wasn't used. I tried to dig up anything I
had in my notes and did a set of new experiments (hence the late
reply), but didn't come up with much.

About the only difference with '-m fast' and '-m immediate' seems to
be the following log entry:

.... database system was
not properly shut down; automatic recovery in progress

For now, I've changed the script to use '-m fast' and removed the
sleep. Will find out after some moderate use of it whether it was a
wise decision or not :-)

--patrick