Thread: accidentally deleted data directory

Thara Vadakkeveedu wrote:
> I am new to postgresql. I have postgresql 9.2 installed on Red hat linux 6.4
> I accidentally deleted data directory this morning (/var/lib/postgresql/9.2/data)
> 
> I tried to start posgresql 9.2 service
> service postgresql9.2 start
> 
> I got a amessage to initialize the db first.
> 
> so I ran service postgresql-9.2 initdb
> 
> this was successful
> then i tried service postgresql-9.2 start
> this failed.
> 
> pgstartup.log indicated I can start the database server using:
>     /usr/pgsql-9.2/bin/postgres -D /var/lib/pgsql/9.2/data
> or
>     /usr/pgsql-9.2/bin/pg_ctl -D /var/lib/pgsql/9.2/data -l logfile start
> 
> However I  am unable to start database as root
> 
> That is the only account I use on this server.
> I tried  su - postgres
> and then from the bash shell i tried to run these commands (tried one at a time)
> but it said address in use
> there are no processes running on 5432.
> 
> How can I start postgres service?

See if there are processes running for user "postgres" that look
like database processes and kill them.

Then try again.

What exactly is the error message?

Yours,
Laurenz Albe