I can't start server PostgreSQL 11: "pg_ctl: could not start server"

Question

I am in CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 (Core)

When I login as postgres and run:

bash-4.2$ /usr/pgsql-11/bin/initdb -D /var/lib/pgsql/11/data
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "postgres".
This user must also own the server process.

The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.UTF-8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Data page checksums are disabled.

creating directory /var/lib/pgsql/11/data ... ok
creating subdirectories ... ok
selecting default max_connections ... 100
selecting default shared_buffers ... 128MB
selecting dynamic shared memory implementation ... posix
creating configuration files ... ok
running bootstrap script ... ok
performing post-bootstrap initialization ... ok
syncing data to disk ... ok

WARNING: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections
You can change this by editing pg_hba.conf or using the option -A, or
--auth-local and --auth-host, the next time you run initdb.

Success. You can now start the database server using:

    /usr/pgsql-11/bin/pg_ctl -D /var/lib/pgsql/11/data -l logfile start

bash-4.2$

then I run

bash-4.2$ /usr/pgsql-11/bin/pg_ctl start -l logfile -D /var/lib/pgsql/11/data
waiting for server to start..../bin/sh: logfile: Permission denied
 stopped waiting
pg_ctl: could not start server
Examine the log output.
bash-4.2$ date
Wed Oct 24 01:50:44 -05 2018
bash-4.2$

I search in GOOGLE for "waiting for server to start..../bin/sh: logfile: Permission denied" but this error only happened in MAC and no solutions is displayed...

Also I run

bash-4.2$ postgres --version;postmaster --version;
postgres (PostgreSQL) 11.0
postgres (PostgreSQL) 11.0
bash-4.2$

then I believe PostgreSQL 11 is fine installed, but I can't start server.

I install with this line:

yum install postgresql-jdbc.noarch postgresql-jdbc-javadoc.noarch postgresql-unit11.x86_64 postgresql-unit11-debuginfo.x86_64 postgresql11.x86_64 postgresql11-contrib.x86_64 postgresql11-debuginfo.x86_64 postgresql11-devel.x86_64 postgresql11-docs.x86_64 postgresql11-libs.x86_64 postgresql11-odbc.x86_64 postgresql11-plperl.x86_64 postgresql11-plpython.x86_64 postgresql11-pltcl.x86_64 postgresql11-server.x86_64 postgresql11-tcl.x86_64 postgresql11-test.x86_64

I didn't add [postgresql11-llvmjit.x86_64] because this requires many dependences.

CentOS Linux release 7.5.1804 + PostgreSQL 11 ?

Do I need install aditional software?

Answer 1

I usually open task manager with administrator mode and look for already running PostgreSQL server. Terminate all processes. This has consistently worked for me whenever I encounter this issue.

Again try to run the pg_ctl.

All the best!

Answer 2

Actually the problem that causing the error is that you have initiated the postgresql database through initdb in /var directory where only the root user has the write privilege. The command that you are trying to run, actually tries to generate logfile in the /var directory which does not have the permission, therefore you get the permission denied error.

To solve this just try to initiate postgresql database in other directories where other users also have write privilege.

Answer 3

I think there is a background postgres process running and firstly you need to kill this service. I had same problem and fixed by this command:

sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql stop

or you can try to kill all postgres named processes in your system monitor and delete postmaster.pid file in your database directory.

Then you can start the server as:

sudo -u <your-username> pg_ctl -D <your-database-file-location> start

An example for this:

sudo -u shc /home/shc/postgres-built/bin/pg_ctl -D /home/shc/mydatabase start

After you are done, to not face same problems again, stop the server as:

sudo -u <your-username> pg_ctl -D <your-database-file-location> stop

Answer 4

So, I faced the same issue. First I checked for if and what all servers were active on my machine using :

brew services list

Then I had some servers active so I stopped them as you need to stop them for posgresql server to work.

brew services stop < name of the server/s active >

Then I created a new database

initdb /usr/local/var/postgres2

and started the server using

 pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres2 -l logfile start

Worked fine for me !! enter image description here

Answer 5

The logfile is not to be taken literally, it should be replaced with a file where the PostgreSQL server process has write permission.

You don't do it that way normally, rather you edit postgresql.conf and configure log_destination, logging_collector, log_directory and log_filename. Then you start PostgreSQL without the -l option.

Your attempt to start PostgreSQL with systemctl probably did work; you can check with

systemctl status postgresql-11