Re: Postmaster.pid - what do the various lines stand for?

Paul Linehan <linehanp(at)tcd(dot)ie> writes:
> Hi all, I have the file postmaster.pid - I would like to know
> what the lines mean? I did Google, but didn't find much.

This is defined in the source code in miscadmin.h:

http://git.postgresql.org/gitweb/?p=postgresql.git;a=blob;f=src/include/miscadmin.h;h=c38993973856b13513e050f45c176bdd4e67160a;hb=HEAD#l425

> I'm curious as to what this line
> /home/pol/Downloads/software/postgres/inst/./data
> means
> The PostgreSQL install is in /home/pol/Downloads/software/postgres/inst/, but
> what does the bit of the path inst/./data - I'm unclear as to what the . (dot)
> in the middle of that path means.

As David noted, "." is just a self-reference to the current directory ---
so it doesn't mean anything much. That tells us something about the
script you're using to start the postmaster, though; possibly it's
got an extra trailing slash on the PGDATA directory name.

regards, tom lane