Re: Postmaster don't start

Ekkehard Schwaar wrote:

> Hello, I have tried without success to start the postmaster in Cygwin
> some hours. I use a AMD2200+ , 256 RAM with Windows XP SP1 prof. It
> wasn't an error message in /var/log or in the event protocol of Win-XP
> to see. The postmaster started without errors after I inserted the user
> postgres in the administrator group. Unfortunately, no note was in the
> README. Please write it down for the other users.

Hey Ekkehard,

Simple version: NO NO NO. BAD BAD BAD. :-)

Longer version: Actually, this sounds like a file/user permissions
issue. If you resolved the problem by adding user 'postgres' to
Administrators group, that implies user 'postgres' did not have the
necessary rights to run postmaster. This could be due to several
things, such as not following the README carefully (e.g., running initdb
NOT as 'postgres' but as the user you are normally logged in as; not
making the appropriate change to the 'Local Security Policies' so that
user 'postgres' can 'Log on as a service'; etc.).

Please note that adding user 'postgres' to the Administrators group is
NOT recommended, as basically this could be a potential security hole to
your XP box. Though Windows users are not used to this, in the Unix
world, services like postmaster, apache, etc., are run in the context of
a restricted user. They are NEVER run with the "god-like" privileges of
user 'root' (that's the equivalent of Windows Administrator account or
anyone in the Adminitrators group).

And if you have not done so already, please be sure to carefully read
(or re-read) Jason Tishler's writeup, found online at

http://www.tishler.net/jason/software/postgresql/postgresql-7.3.4.README

or you can find the same in your installation of Cygwin under
/usr/doc/Cygwin/postgresql-7.3.4.README. Pay careful attention to the
order of the steps, and note the change in prompt, as it indicates what
user context you need to be under. Hopefully this helps.