To: Tony Webb <amw@sanger.ac.uk>
cc: pgsql-admin@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: pg_ctlcluster not logging error (memory problem likely) 
In-reply-to: <49CB4A35.1030002@sanger.ac.uk> 
References: <49CB4A35.1030002@sanger.ac.uk>
Comments: In-reply-to Tony Webb <amw@sanger.ac.uk>
	message dated "Thu, 26 Mar 2009 09:26:13 -0000"
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:35:35 -0400
Message-ID: <28229.1238106935@sss.pgh.pa.us>
From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

Tony Webb <amw@sanger.ac.uk> writes:
> I'm trying to find out why my cluster won't start. It looks like I'm 
> pushing up max_connections too high although I think my memory and 
> semaphore settings are OK. Thing is, when the cluster fails to start I 
> can't see any errors in pg_log or in /var/log/messages.

> When the cluster is up and running it seems to write normally to these 
> locations.

> Could pg_ctlcluster be writing somewhere else?

I'm not familar with pg_ctlcluster, but it seems possible that the
Debian setup is such that messages issued early in startup go somewhere
else than where messages go once the postmaster is fully up and running.
In particular, until the postmaster has absorbed the logging settings
in postgresql.conf, it's *always* going to write to its stderr.  I've
seen startup scripts that send postmaster stderr to /dev/null :-(
because they suppose that pointing log_destination to syslog or some
such means that everything of interest will go there.

Advice is to look into the startup script, see where it sends
postmaster's stderr, and fix that if it's not someplace you can read.

			regards, tom lane