Reputation: 6467

Cannot connect to Postgres server running through brew services

I've been looking for a solution for this and could not find a working solution.

I've installed postgres using brew (brew install postgres) in my MacBook and I am currently running it using brew services (brew services list displays postgres as a running service). However, when I try to run psql I get following error.

psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory Is the server running locally and accepting connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

Anyone has already solved similar problem?

Upvotes: 195

Answers (24)

Ilya Kushlianski

Reputation: 968

I installed postgresql@14 with brew but the DB won't start.

brew services info postgresql showed

Running: ✘
Loaded: ✔
Schedulable: ✘

Turned out a database data folder was missing. So I ran the following:

initdb postgres-data

in the folder where I wanted my data to reside.

Then

pg_ctl -D postgres-data -l logfile start

I was then able to connect to the DB on localhost:5432.

Upvotes: 4

Wilson Silva

Reputation: 11425

I had the same error and I fixed it by removing the process pid file:

rm -f /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid

or for a specific version:

rm -f /usr/local/var/postgresql@16/postmaster.pid

[Updated Answer For Arm-based Chips (Apple M1)]

When you use brew to install postgresql on Apple M1 computers, the postmaster.pid will be located in: /opt/homebrew/var/postgresql/postmaster.pid

Follow following three steps:

# 1. Stop PostgreSQL 
brew services stop postgresql@16

# 2. Delete the postmaster.pid
rm -f /opt/homebrew/var/postgresql@16/postmaster.pid

# 3. Start the PostgreSQL again
brew services start postgresql@16

After the above, you can also check the status of the service by brew services info postgresql

brew services info postgresql@16
postgresql@16 (homebrew.mxcl.postgresql)
Running: ✔
Loaded: ✔
Schedulable: ✘
User: root
PID: 34884

Upvotes: 534

Caio Abe

Reputation: 71

If using homebrew on macos, you can check the logs:

# change @15 by the version you have installed
# run this if you want to check what you have
# `brew list | grep postgres`
tail -n 100 /opt/homebrew/var/log/[email protected]

In my case I saw errors like this:

2023-10-24 14:43:01.793 -03 [54662] FATAL:  lock file "postmaster.pid" already exists
2023-10-24 14:43:01.793 -03 [54662] HINT:  Is another postmaster (PID 10344) running in data directory "/opt/homebrew/var/postgresql@15"?

Removing the lock did the trick: rm /opt/homebrew/var/postgresql@15/postmaster.pid

Then running psql to assert it works: psql -d postgres

Upvotes: 5

mutoe

Reputation: 562

I didn't find the correct log location in the answer above. Probably because the brew installation path of the M1 chip is different from inter.

My log is located in /opt/homebrew/var/log/postgresql/postgresql.log

Upvotes: -1

Hubix vx

Reputation: 1

My problem was that another postgres was running in the background I don't know why, you can check it with the command: sudo lsof -i -P | grep LISTEN | grep :5432 and then kill this process if you don't need it

Upvotes: -1

dazonic

Reputation: 1261

For me the issue was a non-versioned Postgres directory after I assume a version 14 dot upgrade.

brew info postgresql

gives a warning about the non-versioned directory and says to run:

brew services stop postgresql
mv -v "/opt/homebrew/var/postgres" "/opt/homebrew/var/postgresql@14"

Upvotes: 1

Vijay Shaaruck

Reputation: 692

I had the same error when I forced the restart of my mac.

When I did:

brew services list

I got this error:

postgresql        error  256 ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist

Steps followed to resolve this issue:

Open the terminal and type the following command.

cd /opt/homebrew/var/postgres
rm postmaster.pid

Upvotes: 17

Allen

Reputation: 4789

In my case (postgres installed by homebrew),

tailing the log to see what the error was tail -n 50 /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log

2022-04-28 16:38:10.509 PDT [84751] FATAL: lock file "postmaster.pid" already exists 2022-04-28 16:38:10.509 PDT [84751] HINT: Is another postmaster (PID 969) running in data directory "/usr/local/var/postgres"?
kill the pid based on above kill -9 <pid>
restart the service via homebrew brew services restart postgresql && brew services list

Upvotes: 4

Yashika Sharma

Reputation: 23

If someone scrolls to the bottom after trying everything out and it's not working, this is what worked for me. I decided not to use brew for this eventually.

I installed Postgres app directly from the website following this link https://postgresapp.com, initialised a new server and created the databases and tables as usual.

I was also getting port occupied related errors and this answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/43825665 worked for me.

Upvotes: 1

postrational

Reputation: 6356

In my case the problem was that I was attempting to start the brew service in an SSH session on a Mac, where my user was not currently logged in. Simply logging into the Mac, through the MacOS login GUI solved the issue.

A more detailed error message included the hint that the problem was gui-related:

Error: Failure while executing; `/bin/launchctl enable gui/501/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql` exited with 64.

Upvotes: -1

Denis Popov

Reputation: 71

In my case after updating to MacOS Monterey it was need to make

$ brew postgresql-upgrade-database

as well.

Upvotes: 7

Asdrubal

Reputation: 358

My problem was an open connection to my database.

Upvotes: 0

Imran

Reputation: 75

If your postgres.log file contains "image not found error" then you may need to reinstall postgresql:

brew reinstall postgresql

Upvotes: 1

Derek Soike

Reputation: 11670

Problem - Postgres not working after macOS upgrade

I just upgraded to the latest macOS (Big Sur).

My node application that uses a local instance of postgresql as a database was unable to start due to this error: Error: connect ECONNREFUSED 127.0.0.1:5432

Clearly postgresql is no longer running properly on my machine.

Running brew services list shows an error for postgresql:

Name          Status  User  Plist    
postgresql    error   ***** /Users/*****/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist

Solution - Upgrade Postgres

To resolve the problem I upgraded postgresql with the following commands:

$ brew services stop postgresql
$ brew postgresql-upgrade-database # may need to `rm-rf /usr/local/var/postgres.old` first
$ brew services start postgresql

Upvotes: 15

apb

Reputation: 3370

In case all the other answers don't work...

I was seeing this same message and the accepted answer, running

rm -f /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid

didn't work. Neither did

rm -f /usr/local/var/[email protected]/postmaster.pid after I remembered I had a specific version installed.

I did a cat /usr/local/var/log/[email protected] and saw:

FATAL:  lock file "postmaster.pid" already exists
HINT:  Is another postmaster (PID 1231) running in data directory "/usr/local/var/[email protected]"?

> ps aux|grep 1231
[...] /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Profiles/Runtimes/iOS.simruntime/Contents/Resources/RuntimeRoot/usr/libexec/mobileassetd

**thinking face**

Closed the iOS Simulator. Postgres restarted on its own.

This is on a desktop and we had the power go out yesterday, so based on the other answers I suspect the root cause is the hard shutdown without giving things a chance to clean up.

Upvotes: 2

Dave

Reputation: 4436

In case you have multiple versions of postgresql installed. Below mentioned commands will do the job of removing process id(pid) and restarting it. Just make sure you select the correct version.

rm -f /usr/local/var/[email protected]/postmaster.pid

brew services restart [email protected]

Please also refer to Eric Corner's answer to confirm if the issue is about "lock file postmaster.pid already exists" in log file.

Upvotes: 10

fkotsian

Reputation: 194

You might be seeing a conflict of libssl/libcrypto versions.

brew services start postgres logs gave me nada, but manually starting pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres start pointed at:

missing definition _RAND_cleanup in /.../openssl/lib/libcrypto.1.0.0.dylib

Have a shot at:

brew tap-new $USER/old-openssl
brew extract --version=1.0.2t openssl $USER/old-openssl
brew install [email protected]

# and then either brew link [email protected] or symlink the required files to current openssl
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/openssl/[email protected]/lib/libcrypto.1.0.0.dylib /usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/libcrypto.1.0.0.dylib
ln -s /usr/local/Cellar/openssl/[email protected]/lib/libssl.1.0.0.dylib /usr/local/opt/openssl/lib/libssl.1.0.0.dylib

Upvotes: -1

Eric Conner

Reputation: 10772

I ran into this problem today. postgres stopped accepting connections though homebrew thought it was running.

To fix it I ran,

brew services restart -vvv postgresql

Output from this command,

==> Successfully stopped `postgresql` (label: homebrew.mxcl.postgresql)
==> Generated plist for postgresql:
   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
   <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
   <plist version="1.0">
   <dict>
     <key>KeepAlive</key>
     <true/>
     <key>Label</key>
     <string>homebrew.mxcl.postgresql</string>
     <key>ProgramArguments</key>
     <array>
       <string>/usr/local/opt/postgresql/bin/postgres</string>
       <string>-D</string>
       <string>/usr/local/var/postgres</string>
     </array>
     <key>RunAtLoad</key>
     <true/>
     <key>WorkingDirectory</key>
     <string>/usr/local</string>
     <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
     <string>/usr/local/var/log/postgres.log</string>
   </dict>
   </plist>

Then I thought, hmm maybe there's something in that log file,

tail -n 10 /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log

Sure enough,

[4826] FATAL:  lock file "postmaster.pid" already exists
[4826] HINT:  Is another postmaster (PID 1489) running in data directory "/usr/local/var/postgres"?

So, I removed that file

rm /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid

And everything started working again.

Upvotes: 167

Nelu

Reputation: 18790

In my case the postmaster.pid file wasn't even there. Got it working by upgrading postgres.

brew update
brew upgrade

Then, because I upgraded the major version from 10 to 11, I also had to run this:

brew postgresql-upgrade-database

(source https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/18760#issuecomment-410533581)

Upvotes: 63

The RealDuke

Reputation: 3

In my own case, the postgres.log file contains this HINT: Is another postmaster already running on port 5432? If not, remove socket file "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432" and retry. After removing the socket file and restarting, everything worked fine. Note that this is a hidden file and won't be visible through the window browser. Removal should be done via the command line.

Upvotes: 0

Nadeem Qasmi

Reputation: 2437

update it by using command

  brew postgresql-upgrade-database

if you have following error Command 'brew' not found, but can be installed with: sudo apt install linuxbrew-wrapper

then install it by using command

 sudo apt install linuxbrew-wrapper

Upvotes: 2

António Ferreira

Reputation: 111

What worked for me was removing the /usr/local/var/postgres/ folder and then uninstalling and installing postgres again

Upvotes: 7

real_ate

Reputation: 11299

I would combine the two answers from Wilson and Grasshopper here.

You can check the plist file for the postgres service using brew services list to find the location of the file and just opening it up in you favourite editor.

You should see the value of StandardErrorPath listed as:

<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/usr/local/var/log/postgres.log</string>

And then you should tail the end of the log file using tail -n 100 /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log

In my case the error was the following:

2017-12-06 11:51:16.078 GMT [85476] FATAL: lock file "postmaster.pid" already exists 2017-12-06 11:51:16.078 GMT [85476] HINT: Is another postmaster (PID 601) running in data directory "/usr/local/var/postgres"?

This was because I had to hard shutdown my Mac and postgres didn't get a chance to cleanup the PID file. Just remove the PID file rm /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid and start postgres brew services start postgresql

A word of warning: do not delete this PID file unless you are sure that postgres is not running. You can do this by running brew services stop postgresql and then waiting for the result of brew services list to show posgres is in the stopped state.

Upvotes: 30

Grasshopper

Reputation: 1769

I got the same error installing postgresql93 from the versions tap. Inspecting the .plist file indicated in the output of brew services list(~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql93.plist) I found the following message:

FATAL: data directory "/usr/local/var/postgres" has group or world access
DETAIL: Permissions should be u=rwx (0700).

Which led me to this answer: data directory "/usr/local/var/postgres" has wrong ownership

After running sudo chmod -R 700 /usr/local/var/postgres I got a different error:

FATAL: could not open directory "pg_tblspc": No such file or directory

Which then led me to: `pg_tblspc` missing after installation of latest version of OS X (Yosemite or El Capitan)

After running mkdir /usr/local/var/postgres/pg_tblspc/ the cluster started successfully.

Upvotes: 6

Cannot connect to Postgres server running through brew services

Answers (24)

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