Re: Problems Restarting PostgreSQL Daemon

Rich Shepard <rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com> writes:
> I tried following the logic, and it appears the issue now is 'invalid data
> in PID file "/var/lib/pgsql/data/postmaster.pid" '. If I delete that file,
> is it automatically recreated? I'm using /usr/bin/pg_ctl as user postgres.

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.

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?

regards, tom lane