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To: Mischa Sandberg <mischa_sandberg@telus.net>
cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: Reliably determining whether the server came up 
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Comments: In-reply-to Mischa Sandberg <mischa_sandberg@telus.net>
	message dated "Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:06:50 -0800"
Date: Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:44:44 -0500
Message-ID: <23939.1227037484@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
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Mischa Sandberg <mischa_sandberg@telus.net> writes:
>> You could sleep for a second or so *before* you start looking for
>> the pidfile.

> The systems are under erratic load, due to concurrent
> cpu and diskio spikes around start-up time.
> 1-2 secs is not enough to be a guarantee :-(

Well, forget pg_ctl and just start the postmaster directly, so that
your script knows its PID.  Then you could keep an eye on whether the
PID still exists.

			regards, tom lane