Re: postgres startup failure

Matt Bartolome <mattxbart(at)gmail(dot)com> writes:
> I'm attempting to start postgres on a standby machine from a backup. Both
> the primary and standby are running postgres 8.4, fedora 12.

8.4.what exactly?

> DEBUG: invoking IpcMemoryCreate(size=32595968)
> DEBUG: max_safe_fds = 984, usable_fds = 1000, already_open = 6
> DEBUG: logger shutting down
> DEBUG: shmem_exit(0): 0 callbacks to make
> DEBUG: proc_exit(0): 0 callbacks to make
> DEBUG: exit(0)
> DEBUG: shmem_exit(-1): 0 callbacks to make
> DEBUG: proc_exit(-1): 0 callbacks to make

Hmm. I'm thinking that the postmaster must have simply crashed at some
time between starting the logger subprocess and starting the startup
subprocess. You could try running the postmaster under gdb to see
if you can get a stack trace, along the lines of

$ gdb /usr/bin/postgres
gdb> run -d 3 -D /data/postgres/
... crash
gdb> bt
... printout
gdb> quit

You might need to "continue" if it decides to stop at the point of
forking off the logger.

regards, tom lane