Forum OpenACS Q&A: Postgres looks down, but it's up!

Postgres is running with "-i" as well, so it accepts connections on both the Unix domain socket and the TCP/IP socket:

nsadmin@bebox:~$ psql -h localhost real
Welcome to psql, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.
...

nsadmin@bebox:~$ psql real
Welcome to psql, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.
....

The database pool definition reads like so:

ns_section "ns/db/pool/main"
ns_param Driver postgres
ns_param Connections 5
ns_param DataSource localhost::real
ns_param User nsadmin
ns_param Password "nsadmin"
ns_param Verbose On
ns_param LogSQLErrors On
ns_param ExtendedTableInfo On

and in the server log:

[14/Feb/2001:13:29:43][6132.1026][-sched-] Error: Ns_PgOpenDb(postgres):  Could not connect to localhost::real:  connectDB() -- connect() failed: No such file or directory
Is the postmaster running at 'localhost' and accepting connections on Unix socket '5432'?

[14/Feb/2001:13:29:43][6132.1026][-sched-] Error: dbdrv: failed to open database 'postgres:localhost::real'
[14/Feb/2001:13:29:43][6132.1026][-sched-] Error: could not allocate 1 handle from pool "main"
could not allocate 1 handle from pool "main"
    while executing
"ns_db gethandle"
    invoked from within

I'm completely baffled.

Does anyone have an idea where to probe?

I'm running a Debian Linux "woody" system.

In /etc/group:

nsadmin:x:102:nsadmin
web:x:1001:postgres,nsadmin
postgres:x:32:nsadmin

However, the postgres-pl package, that installs the PL/PgSQL language (upon which OpenACS depends) installs the libraries on /usr/lib/postgresql/lib/plpgsql.so and you have to set your www/doc/sql/postgres.sql file to point to that. Read the comments in the beginning of the file and you'll see what you have to modify.

That's most likely the reason why you are getting server errors. Dump the database, recreate it, modify the postgres.sql file, reload the datamodel, and you should be fine.