Re: Postgres 9.2.4 for Windows (Vista) Dell Vostro 400, re-installation failure PLEASE CAN SOMEONE HELP!!

Stephen Brearley wrote on 29.07.2013 21:23:
> 1.Explain why my bug report has not been responded to

Because it's not a bug as you simply upgraded incorrectly.

> 5.Tell me how I should uninstall Postgres, if I am doing this wrong

You did run the "Uninstall", did you?

> 6.Tell me how to remove any hidden users or how I should reset/remove directories etc.

There are no hidden users - especially not with 9.2 (previous versions did create a new Windows user, but that is not the case with 9.2). Unfortunately you failed to mention from which version you upgraded.

> On re-installing Postgres, I have not been able to get it to work.
> During re-installation I get an error message saying the program
> exited with an error code, but otherwise appears to be okay. However,
> when I go into pgadmin and enter my password to connect to the server
> (any password gives the same response), I get a popup saying ‘Server
> doesn’t listen’, could not connect, connection refused etc’. The
> setup defaults to port 5432 during the install process. I’ve checked
> postgresql.conf which has not been installed, but I’ve looked at an
> old copy that I moved into the data folder, and that looks at port
> 5432.

And did you verify that Postgres was actually running (e.g. by looking into the taskmanager)

> Postgres was working okay before, so I don’t think it’s a problem
> with my system or firewall, as I have not changed anything. After my
> initial install, I edited the registry to point to the D: drive, as I
> prefer to have my data stored on a separate partition, and this
> worked okay.

What exactly did you "edit in the registry"? You shouldn't normally need to do that if you ran initdb correctly.

> Consequently it will not allow me access to pg.log

What is "pg.log"?

> The Postgres install will not install with a data folder that is not empty,
>so I had to re-name my data folder to data_old, and moved the contents back in
> afterwards.

What was the version before? If you upgrade from a major version to another (e.g. from 9.1 to 9.2) you can't just "copy" the data folder. You need to migrate it using pg_upgrade (which requires the old server to be still installed) or you need to use pg_dump and pg_restore to get the data from the old install into the new one.

This is clearly documented in the manual.
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/upgrading.html

> The registry seems to be pointing to the right place to find my data.

Again it should not be necessary to edit anything in the registry.
If you need to change the Windows service (which I assume you tried to do with hacking the registry) you should use pg_ctl for that.

> I don’t seem to be able to get anywhere with pgadmin, as
> when I try to connect I get a fatal password authentication error
> now.

Which means the server *is* running, you simply supplied the wrong password.

> pgadmin.log
> 2013-07-18 11:17:56 ERROR : Error connecting to the server: FATAL: password authentication failed for user "SDB"

That is not the logfile from your installation, it's a "normal" message from pgadmin that the password supplied for the user SDB was wrong. That has nothing to do with re-installing Postgres and clearly nothing with the "hidden" users you were referring to.

So apparently your new version **is** running correctly, you just have the wrong credentials.

> The main difficulty seems to be trying to re-install Postgres. If you
> already have created a database, the install program balks at having
> a data folder that is not empty, causing me to use the above
> workaround to copy back my data afterwards. Should be able to do
> this!

Again: the upgrade process is clearly documented in the manual.

Thomas