"Wes Sheldahl" <wes.sheldahl@gmail.com> writes:
> I seem to have an unstable/unreliable installation of postgresql, and I'm
> not sure how to troubleshoot it.
> Symptoms:
> $ psql postgres
> psql: FATAL: semctl(851974, 3, SETVAL, 0) failed: Invalid argument
AFAICS the only documented reason for that semctl to fail would be if
someone had removed the SysV semaphores that Postgres creates for itself
at startup. Is it possible you've got some script on the loose that
periodically tries to clean out all the semaphores in the system? Try
comparing the output of "ipcs -s" just after starting Postgres with the
output after this symptom appears.
It's probably worth asking if you've seen any other flaky behavior on
this box --- if so I'd kinda wonder about bad RAM or some such.
regards, tom lane