Issue with conflicting postgres when using homebrew - macos

I have an issue when attempting to use postgresql along with homebrew. After doing a completely clean install (and after upgrading from postgresql 9.1.3 to 9.2.4 and doing a system update of MacOS X) it appears that the postgresql that comes with Lion is conflicting with the one that homebrew provides.
The conflict means that when OSX launches (and with the ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist), postgresql fails to load properly at startup, which then causes the
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?
error. The thing is, if I then manually load and unload the homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist agent, postgresql works from this point onwards, does anyone know how to fix this issue (I think it may be a conflict between /usr/bin/psql and the homebrew's /usr/local/bin/psql)
EDIT: after a fresh reboot and running launchctl list | grep postgres, I get this as a result 680 - homebrew.mxcl.postgresql, running launchctl list | grep pg gives nothing, and for some odd reason, it happens to be working now (even though I havn't changed anything after posting this). Will reboot a few more times to figure out what happened
EDIT2: It actually seems to work now, I have no idea why (wasted like 3 hours on it last night), I am going to mark this as answered until it comes back again

It seems like it was actually working, maybe something odd was happening in the boot sequence but postgres is now working fine, as expected, through homebrew

Related

Multipass totally broken on MacOS & multipassd error logs

The com.canonical.multipassd service is constantly logging errors on my Mac and multipass won't work at all, even after reinstalling, rebooting, and updating my Mac.
In an attempt to use my GPU in a Linux VM through multipass, I tried to install the AMDGPU driver for my card (Radeon Pro 5300 4GB). I had installed multipass through brew and made some progress, but the ./amdgpu-install process was returning various errors as a result of missing dependencies. Having started to resolve the missing dependencies, in an attempt to build the driver again, the build just stopped halfway through and I couldn't terminate the process or get the VM to respond at all (didn't take a screenshot sorry).
Because of this, I closed the VM shell and tried to get multipass to shut down the VM. Multipass stopped responding altogether - the application just spun, and it didn't respond at all in terminal. I force quit multipass in Activity Monitor. That still didn't fix it, so I (somewhat stupidly) force quit 'hyperkit' and 'multipassd'. This is where everything went really wrong.
Having force quit 'multipassd', I tried to re-open multipass, but it returned the error below
list failed: cannot connect to the multipass socket
Please ensure multipassd is running and '/var/run/multipass_socket' is accessible
I looked this up and tried a few suggested solutions. I uninstalled multipass with Brew. I deleted the application, and reinstalled with brew. I also tried brew remove multipass, and tried installing using the .pkg from the multipass website. When that didn't fix it, I restarted my computer and reset NVRAM on startup. That also didn't make a difference, so I have just updated my Mac to MacOS 11.4, and it is still not fixed.
The console logs suggest that multipassd is still doing something, as it is continually logging in the system.log:
May 26 09:39:15 <myName> com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.canonical.multipassd[2131]): Service exited with abnormal code: 1
May 26 09:39:15 <myName> com.apple.xpc.launchd[1] (com.canonical.multipassd): Service only ran for 0 seconds. Pushing respawn out by 10 seconds.
In the multipass log, this message is also being generated about once every 10 seconds:
[error] [daemon] Caught an unhandled exception: Invalid MAC address
[warning] [Qt] QMutex: destroying locked mutex
These messages are being generated even after resetting NVRAM and rebooting. I think they're the cause of my issue launching multipass, but I haven't found any solution to stop them, and I can't identify any process that is still running related to multipass. As far as brew is concerned, multipass is not installed, but it's logs are still filling up...
Happy to provide console or terminal output if needed - nothing else on my Mac seems to be broken, I just can't use multipass now. I do have a time machine backup, so if that is guaranteed to fix it, I might just resort to the backup, but I'm not sure that would necessarily fix it, and I would rather find an alternative solution.
As this has probably made clear, I'm very new to Linux and VMs... any solutions greatly appreciated!
Fixed it!! I hadn't properly uninstalled it - the 'proper' uninstall script can be run using
sudo sh "/Library/Application Support/com.canonical.multipass/uninstall.sh"
Reinstalling multipass after running this command worked fine.

very strange behaviour with ruby, openssl, unicorn, systemd (Gcloud)

We started seeing some strange errors in our logs that normally appear when ruby isn't compiled properly with OpenSSL. But it's inconcistent...
We're getting errors like:
RuntimeError: Unsupported digest algorithm (SHA256). (also with other digests, like sha1). example error trace
Faraday::SSLError (SSL_CTX_new: (null)) example error trace
We managed to reproduce it when starting unicorn using service unicorn start or systemctl start unicorn. But only with some requests... Not all of them. Some requests that use OpenSSL under the hood do work. Others don't.
However, when we start unicorn with /etc/init.d/unicorn start, everything works without a hitch. (to clarify, systemd starts the same /etc/init.d script)
We tried debugging ENV vars, user permissions, file/dir ownership, recompile ruby, bootstrap a new server from scratch... Nothing seems to help.
In case this helps:
unicorn init.d script
unicorn.rb
What are we missing? What can we try that we haven't thought of?
UPDATE 1
output of some debug commands, e.g. OpenSSL, ruby etc
PATH is being set inside the init.d script
unicorn is being executed via su into www-data user
The same problem happens when we use this unicorn.service file in /etc/systemd/system
We're running Ubuntu 16.04 on Gcloud
Ruby was not installed via apt (explicitly removed, in case platform came pre-installed) and compiled from scratch. We're currently running 2.3.4 and tried also 2.3.6. Compiled either manually or using ruby-build. No rbenv, nor RVM.
We install libssl-dev via apt (we're running apt-get install -y autoconf bison build-essential libssl-dev libyaml-dev libreadline6-dev zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev libgdbm3 libgdbm-dev before building ruby)
UPDATE 2
We're using a scripted/repeatable build process for the VM (using fabric), and this problem is consistent on multiple VMs we bootstrapped on GCloud. We then tried a VM on DigitalOcean with the same bootstrap scripts, and the problem doesn't seem to appear there.
In both cases we picked Ubuntu 16.04 64bit base image, but obviously there are some differences with kernel versions, base installed packages etc...
UPDATE 3
The problem simply vanished. See my answer below.
#gingerlime I had a similar situation with our Jenkins on GCP, we're using ChefDK 3.1.0 (ruby embeed 2.5.1p57) -- tried other also, over a Jenkins that was running over systemd (Ubuntu 16.04) and upstart (Ubuntu 14.04) -- we tried on both versions, right now running over 16.04 in 4.15.0-1023-gcp kernel version, running a few jobs with kitchen-docker and this problem always emerge in a few situations.
I digged into and found that this only happens when the Etc.getlogin class gets called (for me here), this doesn't return any error, it return the correct info, the correct type of the class (String), but once it gets a call, the Unsupported digest algorithm gets raised.
If I start the process manually by root or jenkins user, this problem doesn't happen. I tried to implement the Etc.getlogin in several different ways, like using ENV['USER'], a fixed String, or other classes from Etc, like getpwuid, simulating the return class and values from Etc.getlogin, and the error doesn't get raised.
I'm not sure if this is some bug related to the ruby version and the custom kernel that GCP instances uses, but it happens in a similar situation like yours, and for me, the Etc.getlogin was the problem. Right now, I fixed by using a custom configuration that doesn't gets the call from this function, and it's working normally.
One option is that this isn't an issue of sysVinit vs systemd at all, but you just haven't triggered the issue with your sysVinit script yet.
When you run your svsVinit script through the systemctl command it's going through a compatibility layer, and there may be a problem there. Your problem would be simplified both yourself and for us if you reproduced the issue directly with a systemd service file and shared that file.
You mentioned debugging ENV, but didn't mention exactly what you checked in the ENV. This is definitely one place where systemd could make a difference. As seen in man systemd.exec, systemd sets $PATH in the environment to a fixed value:
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
If this is not exactly the same as when run directly as an sysVinit script, that could be an issue.
I would also check for all your copies of SSL on the system. Do you have more than one? Where? Do you have more than copy of the ruby openssl module loaded?
 locate -r lib/.*libssl.*so
Also see the answer to the FAQ: Why do things behave differently under systemd?
(also posted on this github issue)
It looks like the problem just vanished. We were testing and reproducing it consistently, across several Compute Engine instances on Google Cloud. Under certain conditions (unicorn / puma started by systemd, etc), it was completely reproducible both with our own rails app, and with a plain vanilla rails app we've set for testing purposes. It was reproducible across several ruby versions as well (we tested 2.3.4, 2.3.6 and 2.5.0).
Suddenly, all instances that were consistently failing started working without exhibiting these problems. Like it never existed. We didn't even reboot some of those instances, and we saw no evidence of any unattended upgrades taking place... We also had one snapshot of a system that had this problem, and that we can reliably reproduce on. Creating an instance from this snapshot stopped exhibiting it as well from that specific point in time a few hours ago.
We're totally confused as to what might have cause it, and what might have made it disappear... However, without being able to reproduce it now, I guess there's no point leaving this issue open, so will close it. Chalk it up to Deus ex machina I suppose. (perhaps the google support gods, but they haven't reported anything back to us yet)

Postgres databases and roles disappeared

Yesterday evening I closed my macbook's lid and left work. Came back this morning, turned my computer on, and upon trying to log into psql got a warning that the postgres role didn't exist... Upon further inspection, it seems that all but one of my databases are gone (and the default template0/1, postgres and my user's), as well as every roles but mine (<user>). \du+ in the psql console confirms my user has superuser rights. I still tried $ psql -d database_that_disappeared, to no avail. Tried switching to the other postgres versions I have installed locally (9.5.3 --> 9.6.2 --> 9.5.3), with no luck.
I obviously haven't run any brew update or upgrade, nor has OSX automatically updated anything, as I've turned automatic updates off. I have tried both shutting down and rebooting, to no avail either.
Edit: /usr/local/var/postgres/base shows 26 folders + pgsql_tmp, which makes me feel that the data itself isn't gone?
Just to let you know.
I was facing the very same problem.
Realised I had a process called "Google" that was listening to the port 5432 (found out using the command:
lsof -i -n -P | grep 5432
Besides that, my user (in the OS) disappeared as well!
Well, I found out the problem was that I did have two instances of PostgreSQL installed. When my mac restarted for an update, it started automatically the wrong one!
That looks to have happened due to updating the PGAdmin3 to 4. The 4th installs a new version of the PostgreSQL with it and, instead of replacing the previous version (as I expected) it kept both side by side.
Again, this is what I THINK has happened, because I realised I'm suddenly using a previous version of PGAdmin, with the newest version of Postgres (it even triggers a warning message saying there is a version mismatch).
I hope this has helped someone :)
And if you figure out WHY/HOW that happened, let me know.

psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory (Mac OS X)

Upon restarting my Mac I got the dreaded Postgres error:
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"?
The reason this happened is because my macbook froze completely due to an unrelated issue and I had to do a hard reboot using the power button. After rebooting I couldn't start Postgres because of this error.
WARNING: If you delete postmaster.pid without making sure there are really no postgres processes running you, could permanently corrupt your database. (PostgreSQL should delete it automatically if the postmaster has exited.).
SOLUTION: This fixed the issue--I deleted this file, and then everything worked!
/usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid
--
and here is how I figured out why this needed to be deleted.
I used the following command to see if there were any PG processes running. for me there were none, I couldn't even start the PG server:
ps auxw | grep post
I searched for the file .s.PGSQL.5432 that was in the error message above. i used the following command:
sudo find / -name .s.PGSQL.5432 -ls
this didn't show anything after searching my whole computer so the file didn't exist, but obviously psql "wanted it to" or "thought it was there".
I took a look at my server logs and saw the following error:
cat /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log
at the end of the server log I see the following error:
FATAL: pre-existing shared memory block (key 5432001, ID 65538) is still in use
HINT: If you're sure there are no old server processes still running, remove the shared memory block or just delete the file "postmaster.pid".
Following the advice in the error message, I deleted the postmaster.pid file in the same directory as server.log. This resolved the issue and I was able to restart.
So, it seems that my macbook freezing and being hard-rebooted caused Postgres to think that it's processes were still running even after reboot. Deleting this file resolved. Lots of people have similar issues but most the answers had to do with file permissions, whereas in my case things were different.
None of the above worked for me. I had to reinstall Postgres the following way :
Uninstall postgresql with brew : brew uninstall postgresql
brew doctor (fix whatever is here)
brew cleanup
Remove all Postgres folders :
rm -r /usr/local/var/postgres
rm -r ~/Library/Application\ Support/Postgres
Reinstall postgresql with brew : brew install postgresql
Start server : brew services start postgresql
You should now have to create your databases... (createdb)
If you're on macOS and installed postgres via homebrew, try restarting it with
brew services restart postgresql
If you're on Ubuntu, you can restart it with either one of these commands
sudo service postgresql restart
sudo /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
Maybe this is unrelated but a similar error appears when you upgrade postgres to a major version using brew; using brew info postgresql found out this that helped:
To migrate existing data from a previous major version of PostgreSQL run:
brew postgresql-upgrade-database
Here is my way:
launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
rm /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
The following commands helped me out. The issue was with the PostgreSQL data version. Once upgraded, it started working fine for me.
brew upgrade postgresql
brew postgresql-upgrade-database
brew services restart postgresql
if your postmaster.pid is gone and you can't restart or anything, do this:
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start
as explained here initially
For me, the solution was simply restart my computer. I first tried restarting with Brew services and when that didn't work, restarting seemed like the next best option to try before looking into some of the more involved solutions. Everything worked as it should after.
Another class of reasons why this can happen is due to Postgres version updates.
You can confirm this is a problem by looking at the postgres logs:
tail -n 10000 /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log
and seeing entries like:
DETAIL: The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 12, which is not compatible with this version 13.0.
In this case (assuming you are on Mac and using brew), just run:
brew postgresql-upgrade-database
(Oddly, it failed on run 1 and worked on run 2, so try it twice before giving up)
Hello world :)The best but strange way for me was to do next things.
1) Download postgres93.app or other version. Add this app into /Applications/ folder.
2) Add a row (command) into the file .bash_profile (which is in my home directory):
export PATH=/Applications/Postgres93.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/:$PATH
It's a PATH to psql from Postgres93.app. The row (command) runs every time console is started.
3) Launch Postgres93.app from /Applications/ folder. It starts a local server (port is "5432" and host is "localhost").
4) After all of this manipulations I was glad to run $ createuser -SRDP user_name and other commands and to see that it worked! Postgres93.app can be made to run every time your system starts.
5) Also if you wanna see your databases graphically you should install PG Commander.app. It's good way to see your postgres DB as pretty data-tables
Of, course, it's helpful only for local server. I will be glad if this instructions help others who has faced with this problem.
This problema has many sources, and thus many answers. I've experienced each one of them.
1) If you have a crash of some sort, removing the /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid file is probably required as postgres may not have handled it properly. But ensure that no process is running.
2) Craig Ringer has pointed out in other posts that Apple's bundling of postgreSQL leads to pg gem installation issues Setting the PATH environment variable is a solution.
3) Another solution, is to uninstall and reinstall the gem. A brew update may be necessary as well.
If you stumble upon this post, if you can pinpoint one of the sources, you'll save time...
I was facing a similar issue here I solved this issue as below.
Actually the postgres process is dead, to see the status of postgres run the following command
sudo /etc/init.d/postgres status
It will says the process is dead`just start the process
sudo /etc/init.d/postgres start
This happened to me after my Mac (High Sierra) froze and I had to manually restart it (press and hold the power button). All I had to do to fix it was do a clean restart.
I had the same issue.
Most of the times, the problem is the fact that there's a leftover file
/usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid
which works for most people, but my case was different - I tried googling this issue for last 3 hours, uninstalled postresql on OSX through brew, purged the database, nothing worked.
Finally, I noticed that I had an issue with brew that whenever I tried to install anything, it popped:
Error: Permission denied # rb_sysopen - /private/tmp/github_api_....
or something like it at the end of an install.
I simply did sudo chmod -R 777 /private/tmp and it finally works!
I'm writing this down because this might be a solution for someone else
I faced the same problem for psql (PostgreSQL) 9.6.11.
what worked for me -
remove postmaster.pid -- rm /usr/local/var/postgresql#9.6/postmaster.pid
restart postgres -- brew services restart postgresql#9.6
If postmaster.pid doesn't exist or the above process doesn't work then run --
sudo chmod 700 /usr/local/var/postgresql#9.6
For those running into this issue on M1 macs, try deleting this file and then restarting the brew service:
rm /opt/homebrew/var/postgres/postmaster.pid
My problem ended up being that I was using Gas Mask (a hosts file manager for Mac), and I didn't have an entry for localhost in the hosts file I was using.
I added:
127.0.0.1 localhost
And that resolved my problem.
I'm not entirely sure why, but my Postgres installation got a little bit screwed and some files were deleted resulting in the error OP is showing.
Despite the fact that I am able to run commands like brew service retart postgres and see the proper messages, this error persisted.
I went through the postgres documentation and found that my file /usr/local/var/postgres was totally empty. So I ran the following:
initdb /usr/local/var/postgres
It seems some configurations took place with that command.
Then it asked me to run this:
postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres
And that told me a postmaster.pid file already exists.
I just needed to know if brew would be able to pick up the configs I just ran, so I tested it out.
ls /usr/local/var/postgres
That showed me a postmaster.pid file. I then did brew services stop postgresql, and the postmaster.pid file disappeared. Then I did brew services start postgresql, and VIOLA, the file reappeared.
Then I went ahead and ran my app, which did in fact find the server, however my databases seem to be gone.
Although I know that they may not be gone at all - the new initialization I did may have created a new data_area, and the old one isn't being pointed to. I'd have to look at where that's at and point it back over or just create my databases again.
Hope this helps! Reading the postgres docs helped me a lot. I hate reading answers that are like "Paste this in it works!" because I don't know what the hell is happening and why.
I had the same issue and it was due to an incompatible version after upgrading from version 11 to 13.2
Checking error log at:
/usr/local/var/log/postgres.log
Showed me:
DETAIL: The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 11, which is not compatible with this version 13.2.
To fix I ran:
brew postgresql-upgrade-database
And then started postresql with brew:
brew services start postgresql
The causes of this error are many so first locate your log file and check it for clues. It might be at /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log or /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log or possibly elsewhere. If you installed with Homebrew you can find the location in ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist.
I had this same concern when connecting trying to start a PostgreSQL database server on MacOS Monterey.
When I run the command below to restart the PostgreSQL database server:
brew services restart PostgreSQL
It restarts but when I try to check the status of the PostgreSQL database server using the command below, I get an error:
Name Status User File
mysql started promisepreston ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist
nginx started promisepreston ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist
postgresql error 256 root ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
Here's what worked for me:
First, I checked the log file for the PostgreSQL database server to what was the cause of the error using the command below:
cat /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log
OR
nano /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log
The logs showed the following errors:
"root" execution of the PostgreSQL server is not permitted.
The server must be started under an unprivileged user ID to prevent
possible system security compromise. See the documentation for
more information on how to properly start the server.
2022-01-25 19:01:06.051 WAT [29053] FATAL: database files are incompatible with server
2022-01-25 19:01:06.051 WAT [29053] DETAIL: The data directory was initialized by PostgreSQL version 13, which is not compatible with this version 14.1.
For the root execution error I had to run the following command to fix file permissions that when messed us when I ran brew services with the sudo command prefix. Replace your-username with your MacOS username (in my case my username was promisepreston:
# Stop postgresql
sudo brew services stop PostgreSQL
# In case service file is copied to ~/Library/LaunchAgents as well
brew services stop postgresql
# Fix permission of homebrew files
sudo chown -R your-username:admin $(brew --prefix)/*
For the database files are incompatible with server I had to simply upgrade the existing PostgreSQL data files which were created using version 13 to the latest PostgreSQL version on my computer which was 14.1 by running the following command below:
brew postgresql-upgrade-database
Afterwhich, I restarted the PostgreSQL database server:
brew services restart PostgreSQL
And then checked the status using the command below:
brew services list
Then I got the output below showing that everything was working fine:
Name Status User File
mysql started promisepreston ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.mysql.plist
nginx started promisepreston ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.nginx.plist
postgresql started promisepreston ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
References: Brew PostgreSQL Starts But Process Is Not Running
I had a similar error.
All of this is done from the command line (no sudo calls at all)
I verified I had PostgreSQL installed psql -V (note that's a capital "V")
I attempted to connect to the server: psql postgres
THIS IS WHERE I EXPERIENCED THE ERROR OF THIS STACK OVERFLOW QUESTION
After doing some research about possible fixes, I obviously had PostgreSQL installed, but I didn't have a default server in place.
What I had to do was create a Custom Data Directory
As far as I can tell, creating the custom data directory is the same as having a default server in place.
Since this is a new machine (MacBook Pro 2021 using apple m1 chip), I wanted to find the easiest solution possible, and I believe this Custom Data Directory is just that. The remaining steps to fix this issue are as follows:
From the home directory, I created an empty directory mkdir myData
From the home directory, Initialized a server: initdb myData (throws a bunch of files into the myData directory)
pg_ctl -D myData -l logfile start (starts the server)
psql postgres (connects to the server)
So, as someone fairly new to PostgreSQL and databases and SQL in general, couple notes:
It is possible to "quit" the connection to the server, using \q (while connected to the server, it's also possible to type "help")
It is also possible to "stop" the server, as well with pg_ctl -D myData stop
At this point I now am certain I have PostgreSQL installed, have a server I can start and stop, and have the ability to connect to/disconnect from, that server.
Go to /var/log/
and run cat postgres.log
Here you will find the reason for the failure of postgres.
If it is a smart shut down then probably your icu4c version (C++ library for Unicode) is not proper which is linked with postgres. So run the following commands.
brew upgrade
brew cleanup
This should work ;)
I've had to look up this post several times to solve this issue. There's another fix, which will also applies to similar issues with other running programs.
I just discovered you can use the following two commands.
$top
This will show all the currently running actions with their pid numbers. When you find postgres and the associated pid
$kill pid_number
I just got the same issue as I have put my machine(ubuntu) for update and got below error:
could not connect to server: No such file or directory Is the server
running locally and accepting connections on Unix domain socket
"/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432"?
After completing the updating process when I restart my system error gone. And its work like charm as before.. I guess this was happened as pg was updating and another process started.
SUPER NEWBIE ALERT: I'm just learning web development and the particular tutorial I was following mentioned I have to install Postgres but didn't actually mention I have to run it as well... Once I opened the Postgres application everything was fine and dandy.
#Jagdish Barabari's answer gave me the clue I needed to resolve this. Turns out there were two versions of postgresql installed while only one was running. Purging all postgresql files and reinstalling the latest version resolved this issue for me.
I removed /usr/lib from the LD_LIBRARY_PATH and it worked.
I was working in dockerfile postgres:alpine.
This answer worked for me: https://stackoverflow.com/a/45454567/15067545 on my ubuntu system.
Command: sudo service postgresql restart.

PostgreSQL Permission denied Error on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432" - Lion Server 10.7.3 or Lion Server 10.7.4

I recently had major permission problems using Lion Server where permissions would change on folders at will. During this time I had started getting the following error when trying to do a rake db:migrate command:
rake aborted!
could not connect to server: Permission denied
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432"?
This had been working before when I first created a Rails 3.2.3 application while running 10.7.2. All of a sudden I started having this error come up. I read many blogs about this error and tried to remove it but with no success.
I decided to call Apple Enterprise Support to see what I could do. I suspected that Lion Server had gotten corrupted but wanted to confirm with the support team before wiping my server clean and starting over. They confirmed that is what I needed to do in order to straighten it out. I did this on Friday and only installed what I needed to rebuild my Rails app. I still got the error. I tried again some of the other solutions that were posted but still none of them worked. We continued to look for solutions.
After continuing to search for blog posts we were able to find one that dealt with Lion 10.7.4. What I did not know that something had changed between 10.7.2 when I started writing my Rails application and now with PostgreSQL. We found the following blog post which helped me solve the problem I had for several days.
http://www.mactasia.co.uk/revisited-using-postgresql-in-lion-server
I ended up logging in as root and doing the following:
Made the following changes in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postgresql.postgres.plist
listen_addresses=127.0.0.1
unix_socket_permissions=0777
Changed the permissions of /var/psql_socket
sudo chmod 755 /private/var/pgsql_socket
Afterwards I logged out of root and logged in as I normally do as a server admin. I no longer got the permission error.
which psql will most likely show /bin/psql
I'm guessing we want to call /usr/local/bin/psql
So either we change the $PATH to include /local/bin prior to /bin, which I don't think is a very good solution (security and such), or
We remove /usr/bin/psql by either rm-ing (or mv-ing) the file, (and symlinking to /usr/local/bin)
or uninstalling the psql client.

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