David Mitchell <david(dot)mitchell(at)telogis(dot)com> writes:
> What is the best way to quickly and reliably stop postgres? We've found
> that pg_ctl doesn't work for us very well, frequently failing to
> actually stop the postmaster (it times out and reports that it has
> failed to stop). This is the same even if we use -m immediate.
pg_ctl always works for me (and I use it several times a day ;-)).
What PG version are you using, on what platform? Is it possible
you've got permissions problems?
regards, tom lane