Thread: Error at startup

I'm running Postgres 7.2 on Debian Sid.  I've been hitting the
database all day long without problem.  This evening I added an IP
address to my pg_hba.conf, to allow an ODBC connection.  When I
tried a restart to run the new config, the server failed to start
giving an error of "Unknown ID: -" and nothing else.  Nothing in the
log.  I removed the line I had just added, putting my pg_hba.conf
file back to where it was before, and it still won't start.  Fails
with the same error.  Can anyone tell me what this error might be
indicating??  I could not find it in the docs.

Thanks in advance!
jdk

Adahma <adahma@starport.org> writes:
> I'm running Postgres 7.2 on Debian Sid.  I've been hitting the
> database all day long without problem.  This evening I added an IP
> address to my pg_hba.conf, to allow an ODBC connection.  When I
> tried a restart to run the new config, the server failed to start
> giving an error of "Unknown ID: -" and nothing else.

That error message doesn't appear anywhere in the current PostgreSQL
code, AFAICT. In fact, it looks a fair bit like the error you get for
trying to 'su' into a non-existent account (although the
capitalization is a bit different). Can you try (a) increasing the
debug level (b) posting the exact sequence of commands that leads to
the problem?

If you're using an init script, something might be going awry before
it actually gets to starting the postmaster, so you might want to try
starting it by hand.

Cheers,

Neil

--
Neil Conway <neilc@samurai.com> || PGP Key ID: DB3C29FC

On Tue, Sep 24, 2002 at 09:19:46PM -0400, Neil Conway wrote:
> Adahma <adahma@starport.org> writes:
> > I'm running Postgres 7.2 on Debian Sid.  I've been hitting the
> > database all day long without problem.  This evening I added an IP
> > address to my pg_hba.conf, to allow an ODBC connection.  When I
> > tried a restart to run the new config, the server failed to start
> > giving an error of "Unknown ID: -" and nothing else.
>
> That error message doesn't appear anywhere in the current PostgreSQL
> code, AFAICT. In fact, it looks a fair bit like the error you get for
> trying to 'su' into a non-existent account (although the
> capitalization is a bit different). Can you try (a) increasing the
> debug level (b) posting the exact sequence of commands that leads to
> the problem?
>
> If you're using an init script, something might be going awry before
> it actually gets to starting the postmaster, so you might want to try
> starting it by hand.

Thanks!  This led me in the right direction and all is well again.
The problem was actually with the login package.  su was broken, so
when the init script was calling su - postgres, the hyphen was being
interpreted as the user name instead of a switch.  I got things
running manually last night, and a fixed login package came through
today.

Thanks again,
jdk