Re: "FATAL: the database system is starting up" and hot_standby = on

>
> Now that would be really strange if you could modify the database while in
> recovery mode.
> Unfortunately you cannot test that now...

I tried that right after enabling hot_standby, so databases was writable.

In my opinion the main question is why crash recovery took so long.
> The server log should be able to tell you more about it.

server logs with debug level 5 didn't tell anything usefull.
there is no something in logs about recovery mode start, nor about recovery
mode end.
so it's hard to say how long crash recovery took.
No more 24h, no less 2h. Databases are very small - about 60Gb. Resources
are high available (SSD, Xeon E7), but not used.

Is your checkpoint_timeout very high?
>
It's default (5 min).

> Was there a backup_label file in the data directory (now backup_label.old)?

No, there is no.