I want to warn you all that you might hurt yourself by banging your head
against the wall or damage your karma by using foul language if you find
your postmaster rejecting to work after a minor change in the
postgresql.conf. (I changed the listenig address to an IP instead of *.)
Windows can't start the service anymore but says the program (Postgres)
didn't issue an error message.
Postgres doesn't write a logfile either.
After a long and thorough head scratching while staring at the config I
logged in as "postgres" and startet postmaster directly on the console.
Now it said "syntax error in file ...postgres.conf in line 322" or
something similar.
Line 322 was the last one and was a comment.
So I suspected the lines before it which looked reasonably OK, too.
After trying the sensible solutions I went via the improbaple to the
ridiculous and there it was.
My editor strips empty lines at the end of a textfile and sets EOF
right after the last visible character so it dumps the CRLF of the last
line and even though it was a comment Postmaster complaines about a
syntax error and goes on strike.
This should be mentioned in the FAQ if it isn't already.