Rich Shepard <rshepard@appl-ecosys.com> writes:
> On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Tom Lane wrote:
>> The "invalid data" bit is interesting though. It looks like pg_ctl would
>> produce that error if the pidfile exists but is empty when it looks. This
>> seems like a race condition hazard, though the odds of hitting it are
>> tiny. What's in the file exactly?
> I deleted the .pid, but still could not get the postmaster running. Then I
> 'touched' the name so I had an empty file. Made no difference. While pg_ctl
> tells me the server is starting, there is no /tmp/.s.PGSQL*, no pidfile, and
> no postmaster process.
Sounds to me like the postmaster tries to start and fails. Look into
the postmaster log. (If the log is going to /dev/null, send it
someplace else...)
regards, tom lane