Re: Can't restart Postgres

[Shawn Thomas <thomassd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well that would make more sense of things.  I had removed and re-installed the postresql-common package:

https://packages.debian.org/jessie/postgresql-common

and thought that it would leave the main PG package in place.  But perhaps I was wrong.  I’ll follow Tom’s advice and just re-install everything (saving the old data directory) and hope the new installation can use the old data data directory.

One question about this approach though:  the Debian package installation automatically initializes the new data directory and starts PG.  If I shut it down and copy the old data directory into the newly installed one, will there be an xlog issue?

-Shawn

On Feb 15, 2017, at 9:09 AM, Magnus Hagander <magnus@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 15, 2017 at 6:03 PM, Shawn Thomas <thomassd@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

/usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin/pg_ctl: No such file or directory

postgres@pangaea:/usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin$ ls -al
  total 4008
  drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 Feb  9 16:17 .
  drwxr-xr-x 3 root root    4096 Feb  9 16:17 ..
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   68128 Nov 16 06:53 clusterdb
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   68192 Nov 16 06:53 createdb
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   63920 Nov 16 06:53 createlang
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   72672 Nov 16 06:53 createuser
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   63936 Nov 16 06:53 dropdb
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   63920 Nov 16 06:53 droplang
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   63904 Nov 16 06:53 dropuser
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   68416 Nov 16 06:53 pg_basebackup
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  351904 Nov 16 06:53 pg_dump
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 2186504 Nov 16 06:53 pg_dumpall
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   30992 Nov 16 06:53 pg_isready
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   47600 Nov 16 06:53 pg_receivexlog
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   51928 Nov 16 06:53 pg_recvlogical
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  154944 Nov 16 06:53 pg_restore
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  515320 Nov 16 06:53 psql
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   68160 Nov 16 06:53 reindexdb
  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root   72384 Nov 16 06:53 vacuumdb

As I mentioned, this Debian package removes pg_ctl from the bin directory and instead attempts to wrap the pg_ctl functionality in a perl script so that the PG process is integrated with systemd.  I really wish they hadn’t, and it’s part of the reason I’m where I’m at.

pg_ctl is normally present in /usr/lib/postgresql/<version>/bin on a debian system. If that is gone, somebody removed it, or you didn't install the "postgresql-9.4" package which provides it. On a 9.4 system:

$ dpkg -S /usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin/pg_ctl

postgresql-9.4: /usr/lib/postgresql/9.4/bin/pg_ctl

You could try reinstalling the postgresql-9.4 package and see if it comes back. The rest of the binaries in that directory seems to be from postgresql-9.4-client though -- have you actually by mistake uninstalled the server package completely?

As in, that directory is supposed to have the "postgres" binary which is the database server and it's not there. So there is no wonder it's not starting... 

--

 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/