(re)start in our init scripts seems broken

Hi,

A few days ago I ran into a problem with the init script packaged in our
community RPM packages. What happened was that they initiated a restart,
but this happened:

# /etc/init.d/postgresql-9.3 restart
Stopping postgresql-9.3 service: [FAILED]
Starting postgresql-9.3 service: [ OK ]

The database was however still in the shutdown mode, performing a
checkpoint. Sadly the init script uses default timeout, so the stop
terminates after just 60 seconds. But that seems fine, as the init
script reports the failure correctly.

However the start action then seemingly succeeds, because it does this:

echo -n "$PSQL_START"
$SU -l postgres -c "$PGENGINE/postmaster -D '$PGDATA' ${PGOPTS} &"

"$PGLOG" 2>&1 < /dev/null

sleep 2
pid=`head -n 1 "$PGDATA/postmaster.pid" 2>/dev/null`
if [ "x$pid" != x ]
then
success "$PSQL_START"
touch "$lockfile"
echo $pid > "$pidfile"
echo
else
failure "$PSQL_START"
echo
script_result=1
fi

It simply attempts to start the postmaster directly (instead of using
pg_ctl), does not check the return code and instead proceeds to check
the postmaster.pid file and existence of the process.

This however fails to do the trick, because the database is still
running (in shutdown), so the postmaster does not overwrite the file.
And of course the PID still matches a running process.

Is there a reason why it's coded like this? I think we should use the
pg_ctl instead or (at the very least) check the postmaster return code.
Also, perhaps we should add an explicit timeout, higher than 60 seconds.

regards

--
Tomas Vondra http://www.2ndQuadrant.com
PostgreSQL Development, 24x7 Support, Remote DBA, Training & Services

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