Thread: FATAL: the database system is starting up

On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 1:37 AM, Joe Carr <joe.carr@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello all,
> OS = Windows Server 2003
> PostGres = 9.0
>
> I'm trying to bring up a second machine as a hot standby. When I attempted
> to start the service on the second machine I receive the following :
>
> 2010-09-22 09:33:56 PDT LOG:  database system was interrupted; last known up
> at 2010-09-22 09:07:51 PDT
> 2010-09-22 09:33:56 PDT LOG:  creating missing WAL directory
> "pg_xlog/archive_status"
> 2010-09-22 09:33:56 PDT LOG:  entering standby mode
> 2010-09-22 09:33:57 PDT FATAL:  the database system is starting up
> 2010-09-22 09:33:57 PDT LOG:  restored log file "00000001000000000000002E"
> from archive
> 2010-09-22 09:33:57 PDT LOG:  redo starts at 0/2E000020
> 2010-09-22 09:33:57 PDT LOG:  consistent recovery state reached at
> 0/2F000000
> 2010-09-22 09:33:57 PDT LOG:  streaming replication successfully connected
> to primary
> 2010-09-22 09:33:58 PDT FATAL:  the database system is starting up
> 2010-09-22 09:33:59 PDT FATAL:  the database system is starting up
>
> and the "FATAL:  the database system is starting up" message will continue.
>
> Do you know any steps to debug this message? I have a feeling it is a file
> permissions error, but I cannot determine the cause.

Did you set hot_standby to true in postgresql.conf of the standby server?

Regards,

--
Fujii Masao
NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION
NTT Open Source Software Center

Joe Carr <joe.carr@gmail.com> wrote:

> and the "FATAL:  the database system is starting up" message will
> continue.

I believe that you get that when there is an attempt to connect to a
database which is in recovery mode.  I think the pg_ctl program
makes attempts for about one minute before it gives up.  If you have
some other monitoring software which is attempting connection, or
some software for managing failover, perhaps that's the cause?

-Kevin