pg_ctl [-w] [-D datadir][-p path] [-o "options"] start
pg_ctl [-w] [-D datadir] [-m [s[mart]|f[ast]|i[mmediate]]] stop
pg_ctl [-w] [-D datadir] [-m [s[mart]|f[ast]|i[mmediate]]
[-o "options"] restart
pg_ctl [-D datadir] status
Wait for the database server comes up, by watching for creation of the pid file (PGDATA/postmaster.pid). Times out after 60 seconds.
Specifies the database location for this database installation.
Specifies the path to the postmaster image.
Specifies options to be passed directly to postmaster.
The parameters are usually surrounded by single- or double quotes to ensure that they are passed through as a group.
Specifies the shutdown mode.
smart mode waits for all the clients to logout. This is the default.
Fast mode sends SIGTERM to the backends, that means active transactions get rolled back.
Immediate mode sends SIGUSR1 to the backends and lets them abort. In this case, database recovery will be neccessary on the next startup.
Start up postmaster.
Shut down postmaster.
Restart the postmaster, performing a stop/start sequence.
Show the current state of postmaster.
Postmaster status.
pg_ctl is a utility for starting, stopping or restarting postmaster.
To start up postmaster:
> pg_ctl start
If -w is supplied, pg_ctl waits for the database server comes up, by watching for creation of the pid file (PGDATA/postmaster.pid), for up to 60 seconds.
Parameters to invoke postmaster are taken from the following sources:
Path to postmaster: found in the command search path.
Database directory: PGDATA environment variable.
Other parameters: PGDATA/postmaster.opts.default.
postmaster.opts.default contains parameters for postmaster. With a default installation, the -S option is enabled. So pg_ctl start implies:
postmaster -S
Note that postmaster.opts.default is installed by initdb from lib/postmaster.opts.default.sample under the Postgres installation directory (lib/postmaster.opts.default.sample is copied from src/bin/pg_ctl/postmaster.opts.default.sample while installing Postgres).
To override the default parameters you can use -D, -p and -o options.
An example of starting the postmaster, blocking until postmaster comes up is:
> pg_ctl -w start
To specify the postmaster binary path, try:
> pg_ctl -p /usr/local/pgsq/bin/postmaster start
For a postmaster using port 5433, and running without fsync, use:
> pg_ctl -o "-o -F -p 5433" start
> pg_ctl stop
stops postmaster. Using the -m
switch allows one to control how the
backend shuts down. -w waits for
postmaster to shut down. -m specifies
the shut down mode.
This is almost equivalent to stopping the postmaster then starting it again except that the parameters used before stopping it would be used too. This is done by saving them in $PGDATA/postmaster.opts file. -w, -D, -m, -fast, -immediate and -o can also be used in the restarting mode and they have same meanings as described above.
To restart postmaster in the simplest form:
> pg_ctl restart
To restart postmaster, waiting for it to shut down and to come up:
> pg_ctl -w restart
To restart using port 5433 and disabling fsync after restarting:
> pg_ctl -o "-o -F -p 5433" restart
To get status information from postmaster:
> pg_ctl status
Here is a sample output from pg_ctl:
pg_ctl: postmaster is running (pid: 13718)
options are:
/usr/local/src/pgsql/current/bin/postmaster
-p 5433
-D /usr/local/src/pgsql/current/data
-B 64
-b /usr/local/src/pgsql/current/bin/postgres
-N 32
-o '-F'