2000-11-25 pg_ctl 1 Application pg_ctl Starts, stops, or restarts postmaster pg_ctl start -w -D datadir -p path -o options pg_ctl stop -w -D datadir -m s[mart] f[ast] i[mmediate] pg_ctl restart -w -D datadir -m s[mart] f[ast] i[mmediate] -o options pg_ctl status -D datadir pg_ctl is a utility for starting, stopping, or restarting the , or displaying the status of a running postmaster. -w Wait for the database server to come up, by watching for creation of the pid file (PGDATA/postmaster.pid). Times out after 60 seconds. -D datadir Specifies the file system location of the database files. If this is omitted, the environment variable PGDATA is used. -p path Specifies the location of the postmaster executable. By default the postmaster is taken from the same directory as pg_ctl, or failing that, the hard-wired installation directory. It is not necessary to use this option unless you are doing something unusual and get errors that the postmaster was not found. -o options Specifies options to be passed directly to postmaster. The parameters are usually surrounded by single or double quotes to ensure that they are passed through as a group. -m mode Specifies the shutdown mode. smart s Smart mode waits for all the clients to disconnect. This is the default. fast f Fast mode does not wait for clients to disconnect. All active transactions will be rolled back. immediate i Immediate mode will abort without complete shutdown. This will lead to a recovery run on restart. start Start up postmaster. stop Shut down postmaster. restart Stop the postmaster, if one is running, and then start it again. status Show the current state of postmaster. If the file postmaster.opts.default exists in the data directory, the contents of the file will be passed as options to the postmaster, unless overridden by the -o option. To start up postmaster: $ pg_ctl start An example of starting the postmaster, blocking until postmaster comes up is: $ pg_ctl -w start For a postmaster using port 5433, and running without fsync, use: $ pg_ctl -o "-F -p 5433" start $ pg_ctl stop stops postmaster. Using the -m switch allows one to control how the backend shuts down. -w waits for postmaster to shut down. This is almost equivalent to stopping the postmaster then starting it again except that pg_ctl saves and reuses the command line options that were passed to the previously running instance. To restart postmaster in the simplest form: $ pg_ctl restart To restart postmaster, waiting for it to shut down and to come up: $ pg_ctl -w restart To restart using port 5433 and disabling fsync after restarting: $ pg_ctl -o "-F -p 5433" restart Here is a sample status output from pg_ctl: $ pg_ctl status pg_ctl: postmaster is running (pid: 13718) Command line was: /usr/local/pgsql/bin/postmaster '-D' '/usr/local/pgsql/data' '-p' '5433' '-B' '128' This is the command line that would be invoked in restart mode.