On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Tom Lane wrote:
If you're certain there's no postmaster running, it's safe to remove postmaster.pid. However you really shouldn't have to; the postmaster is generally able to figure out whether a pidfile is live or not.
Tom, I thought the postmaster knew what was current and what needed to be replaced, but the process ID in the pidfile did not exist.
The "invalid data" bit is interesting though. It looks like pg_ctl would produce that error if the pidfile exists but is empty when it looks. This seems like a race condition hazard, though the odds of hitting it are tiny. What's in the file exactly?
I deleted the .pid, but still could not get the postmaster running. Then I 'touched' the name so I had an empty file. Made no difference. While pg_ctl tells me the server is starting, there is no /tmp/.s.PGSQL*, no pidfile, and no postmaster process. In the past I've managed to start the postmaster daemon manually, but today I seem to have it FUBARed. Rich -- Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D. | Integrity Credibility Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc. | Innovation <http://www.appl-ecosys.com> Voice: 503-667-4517 Fax: 503-667-8863
