Timothy Perrigo <tperrigo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes: > We are able to connect to the instance (using psql), but cannot shut > down or restart the instance using pg_ctl (it just reports that the > server is not running). We are running PostgreSQL version 8.0.0 and > Mac OS X 10.3.9. Can anyone tell us what's going on? Sounds to me like you're running pg_ctl with a $PGDATA setting that doesn't match where the server actually lives. Try "show data_directory;" in psql to verify what the server thinks $PGDATA is. A less likely possibility is that some outside force removed the $PGDATA/postmaster.pid file. If that's the case, signal the postmaster to shut down using "kill -TERM" (equivalent of normal shutdown) or "kill -INT" (equivalent of fast shutdown) and then restart it to recreate the pid file. ("pg_ctl stop" is actually just a wrapper around these signal operations...) regards, tom lane