Postgres lock file postmaster.pid already exists

Visual Basic. SqlException: An attempt to attach an auto-named database for file "Location" failed. A database with the same name exists, or specified file cannot be opened, or it is located on UNC share. When is "volatile" used instead of "lock"? Neff last post: by. Software Development. Remote Development and Debugging Tools. Nested class structure question. Ms access. Undesired Name? Follow us! Debadatt Debadatt 5, 4 4 gold badges 25 25 silver badges 38 38 bronze badges.

You have another instance of PostgreSQL starting up automatically on the machine. Rather than deleting the socket file, identify the instance that's autostarted and disable it. How depends on what operating system you are using and how you installed PostgreSQL. You shouldn't need to reboot a server and it shouldn't "hang" in the first place, so you should also look at those underlying issues; they may indicate hardware problems that could get worse over time.

Posted very similar question stackoverflow. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group. Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 8 years, 11 months ago. Active 1 month ago. Viewed k times. This user must also own the server process. The default text search configuration will be set to "english".

Now when I look at my Activity Monitor I can see 6 instances of postgress. How do I fix this? Improve this question. AdamT AdamT 1, 1 1 gold badge 9 9 silver badges 9 9 bronze badges.

You probably see one instance of postgres with a postmaster and five utility backends. PostgreSQL is a multi-process architecture. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Verify with ps that the pid is that of a postgres postmaster. Improve this answer. Craig Ringer Craig Ringer 3, 1 1 gold badge 15 15 silver badges 17 17 bronze badges. This works. Had a problem where I emptied my trash and it seems some data files probably were in there Once I killed the old process it worked fine.

It should be mentioned that after a hard crash the PID file might survive, while the process dies. See second answer for that case.

A plain kill PID didn't work for me. I needed kill -3 PID. In my case I had done a shutdown which may have killed terminal windows without stopping the processes properly. The kill -3 PID killed the process and its children successfully letting me start postgres again.

Show 5 more comments. FATAL: lock file "postmaster. LOG: database system was interrupted; last known up at PDT LOG: database system was not properly shut down; automatic recovery in progress or at least that's what I just saw after I did the above :- And really, shouldn't Postgres be smart enough to realize that there is no process with PID and remove the bogus pid file on its own?

AlexChaffee AlexChaffee 5 5 silver badges 5 5 bronze badges. This was the case for me. I had another process coincidentally running on the same PID as the postmaster.