Re: pg_upgrade: "pg_ctl failed to start the new server"

On Wed, Jun 13, 2012 at 11:19:41AM -0400, Evan D. Hoffman wrote:
> I'm trying to upgrade Postgres 9.0 to 9.1 with pg_upgrade.  Both
> versions are installed from the PGDG Yum repo:
>
> -bash-4.1$ /usr/pgsql-9.0/bin/postgres -V
> postgres (PostgreSQL) 9.0.8
> -bash-4.1$ /usr/pgsql-9.1/bin/postgres -V
> postgres (PostgreSQL) 9.1.4
>
> I can successfully start and connect to both 9.0 and 9.1.  When I run
> pg_upgrade, it fails with the error "pg_ctl failed to start the new
> server," however it apparently does start the new server (output
> below).  Any ideas?  This is a freshly installed CentOS 6.2 machine
> with the 9.0 DB copied over from another machine via streaming
> replication (which I have since ended and the server is now
> standalone).

Have you looked at the logs from pg_upgrade?  Does "pg_ctl -w start"
work?  My guess is that the -w (wait) is failing for some reason.  We
did improve the -w handling in PG 9.1 so I didn't think there were any
failure cases, but you might have found a new one.

--
  Bruce Momjian  <bruce@momjian.us>        http://momjian.us
  EnterpriseDB                             http://enterprisedb.com

  + It's impossible for everything to be true. +