Thread: IpcSemaphoneInitialize ... Invalid Argument (Solved)

    I noticed back in the archives around June that somebody was having a
problem which I encountered running 7.3.4 on Cygwin, Win2K. I fixed it, so
I thought I'd post the solution to the list, since I didn't notice it
having been posted. Forgive me if it's already been solved before. :-)

    The postmaster service fails to start, and the error message in
/var/log/postmaster.log is:

    IpcSemaphoreInitialize: semctl(id=2, 0, SETVAL, 0) failed: Invalid argument
    LOG:  startup process (pid 2532) exited with exit code 1
    LOG:  aborting startup due to startup process failure

    What apparently happened is that the Win2K SCM had the wrong password for
the "./postgres" user.

    More specifically, the incantation that I went through which seemed to fix it:

    1) Changed postmaster to log on as Local System, and attempt to start it.
(Failed to start.)
    2) Change postmaster back to logging on as "postgres", and re-type in the
password for "postgres" in the provided box.
    3) Start postmaster using "net start postmaster" in Cygwin.

    -Max

Max,

On Sat, Aug 09, 2003 at 02:50:39PM -0700, Max Kanat-Alexander wrote:
> I noticed back in the archives around June that somebody was having a
> problem which I encountered running 7.3.4 on Cygwin, Win2K. I fixed
> it, so I thought I'd post the solution to the list, since I didn't
> notice it having been posted. Forgive me if it's already been solved
> before. :-)

Thanks for trying to help, but IMO your assessment is incorrect.

> The postmaster service fails to start, and the error message in
> /var/log/postmaster.log is:
>
>     IpcSemaphoreInitialize: semctl(id=2, 0, SETVAL, 0) failed: Invalid
>     argument
>     LOG:  startup process (pid 2532) exited with exit code 1
>     LOG:  aborting startup due to startup process failure
>
>     What apparently happened is that the Win2K SCM had the wrong
>     password for the "./postgres" user.

The above should cause a logon failure not a semctl() error.

>     More specifically, the incantation that I went through which seemed
>     to fix it:
>
>     1) Changed postmaster to log on as Local System, and attempt to
>     start it. (Failed to start.)
>     2) Change postmaster back to logging on as "postgres", and re-type
>     in the password for "postgres" in the provided box.
>     3) Start postmaster using "net start postmaster" in Cygwin.

I don't understand how the above would correct the semctl() problem.
Unless is somehow fixed the permissions on the cygipc files in /tmp...

Jason

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