2009/10/5 Markus Wollny
<Markus.Wollny@computec.de> Hi!
pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org wrote:
> Unfortunately there is nothing anywhere telling me what the
> problem is. The log file is empty, there is nothing in the
> /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog either. The only output
> I get is this.
>
> * Starting PostgreSQL 8.3 database server
> * The PostgreSQL server failed to start. Please check the log output.
> What can I do to figure out why it won't start?
Was it a minor-release upgrade? (i.e. 8.3.1 to 8.3.7 and not 8.2. to 8.3) If not, you would have needed to do a complete dump and restore of your data.
To force a log file, try pg_ctl start -l /path/to/logfile
You might as well use /tmp/pg.log for the logfile for diagnosis. This should tell you what the problem is.
Thom
