Rich Shepard <rshepard(at)appl-ecosys(dot)com> writes:
> only thing that occurs to me is this: the postmaster is started by root, not
> by user postgres or user rshepard. Only root has permission to run
> '/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql restart'. Could this have any bearing on the
> results?
Hm. I assume that init script does something like
su postgres -c 'postmaster ...'
Check the man page for "su". Usually there is some option needed to
make "su" pick up the login environment of the target user. On HPUX
you'd do
su - postgres postmaster ...
but I'm too lazy to go check it on other Unixen...
regards, tom lane