Re: Cannot get postgres started on Fedora core 3

Tom, I owe you bigtime. That was exactly the problem. I would remove selinux
from my machine if I wasn't worried that it wasn't actually protecting me
from the outside world. I had problems installing OpenGroupware as well with
selinux, but I thought I had them resolved. I bet it got overwritten on an
update cycle.

I guess I better get educated on selinux so I can turn it on and off at will
without it driving the rest of my system insane.

Is there a config file I can change to keep that from happening in the
future?

Thanks again!

Mark

> If I manually enter the command on the command line
> postgres -c /usr/bin/postmaster -p 5432 -D /var/lib/pgsql
> I get nothing.... not even a warning that I shouldn't start postgres as
> root.
> If I just type "postgres" on the command line.... nothing. No warnings, no
> nothing.....

I'll bet you have SELinux enforcement on.  One of the less fun
properties of that thing (at least in Red Hat's current "targeted"
policy) is that it forbids daemons from writing on /dev/tty.  And
the postgres executable is classified as a daemon even when you
invoke it from the command line.  Net result: no error messages.

Does it work any better after "sudo /usr/sbin/setenforce 0" ?

            regards, tom lane