script.
To do this, have pg_ctl pass down its parent shell's PID in an environment
variable PG_GRANDPARENT_PID, and teach CreateLockFile() to disregard that PID
as a false match if it finds it in postmaster.pid. This allows us to cope
with one level of postgres-owned shell process even with pg_ctl in the way,
so it's just as safe as starting the postmaster directly. You still have to
be careful about how you write the initscript though.
Adjust the comments in contrib/start-scripts/ to not deprecate use of
pg_ctl. Also, fix the ROTATELOGS option in the OSX script, which was
indulging in exactly the sort of unsafe coding that renders this fix
pointless :-(. A pipe inside the "sudo" will probably result in more
than one postgres-owned process hanging around.
must be stale. Tweak example startup scripts to not use pg_ctl but launch
the postmaster directly, thereby ensuring that only the postmaster's direct
parent shell will be a postgres-owned process. In combination these should
fix the longstanding problem of the postmaster sometimes refusing to start
during reboot because it thinks the old lockfile is not stale.
Magnus Hagander
Bruce Momjian
Tom Lane
Peter Eisentraut
PostgreSQL Daemon