> we have an application that needs to restart postgres if it
>crashes.
This is not a solution, postgres should provide, as it is OS-related.
As Tom already stated, crashes are rare (we never had one in the last years) and if it crashed it obviously cannot control anything else :-)
If crashes are not the main problem, I'd recommend sudo (exists for many unix derivates) or equivalents. It can selectively grant the "other" user the right to execute a postgres startup script/executable as the postgres user, without the need to share passwords or grant more rights than necessary.
HTH
Jan
