PostgreSQL 9.1 on Ubuntu Lucid fails to start - how to debug?

Question

I'm using Vagrant with Chef Solo to setup a Lucid 64 box.

I'm using a Chef recipe to install PostgreSQL 9.1 from Martin Pitt's backports.

The install goes ok until the point where the database is started with

/etc/init.d/postgresql start 

There's a log pause and the command fails.

If I run pg_ctl manually, the database starts!

The entire contents of my postgresql-9.1-main log file is:

2012-05-07 11:01:18 PDT LOG: database system was shut down at 2012-05-07 11:01:16 PDT 2012-05-07 11:01:18 PDT LOG: database system is ready to accept connections 2012-05-07 11:01:18 PDT LOG: autovacuum launcher started 2012-05-07 11:01:18 PDT LOG: incomplete startup packet 2012-05-07 11:01:26 PDT LOG: received fast shutdown request 2012-05-07 11:01:26 PDT LOG: aborting any active transactions 2012-05-07 11:01:26 PDT LOG: autovacuum launcher shutting down 2012-05-07 11:01:26 PDT LOG: shutting down 2012-05-07 11:01:26 PDT LOG: database system is shut down 

I've tried to change the postgresql config file to get more info into the logfile, but that hasn't worked at all.

How do I debug this to find out what is failing so I can fix it?

Answer 1

Some things I would start with:

• ensure that postgresql is not already running
• check permisssions on /var/lib/postgresql/9.1/main

However I would advise starting postgresql using pg_ctlcluster. This script is called by the init script, and is a wrapper for pg_ctl which among other things performs several sanity checks. If those checks were to fail, they would prevent postgresql from starting.

pg_ctlcluster 9.1 main start