Hello Tom,
> I do not think this is a Postgres bug. The PGDATA environment
> variable is not canonical, it is just the default to be used if
> you don't specify a -D switch on the postmaster/pg_ctl command line.
> In fact, it might not be set at all. (I see that pg_ctl does set
> it, but pg_ctl is not the only way to start the postmaster.)
> Therefore, relying on PGDATA in a restore_command script isn't safe.
> You should be relying on the current working directory (PWD) instead.
A test executes pg_ctl with the correct path to cluster and the correct CWD.
pg_ctl (and so on) executes an external program with inconsistent PGDATA
and CWD.
This is clearly a problem on your side )
I wonder that it was not detected earlier.
For my point of view, if you can't provider a valid path in PGDATA, do
not do it at all.
With Best Regards,
Dmitry Kovalenko
