Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:
> On 11/15/2012 03:41 PM, Jeff Janes wrote:
>> OK. You see pg_ctl as a wrapper around postmaster, while I was
>> viewing it as a thing in itself.
> You're possibly not aware of its history. Before 8.0 it was a shell
> script and its use was seen as rather optional.
It's *still* rather optional. A lot of distros use init scripts that
don't bother with it. Personally I find it convenient for stopping
the postmaster, but not all that helpful for starting it.
regards, tom lane