Question

I’m new to psql, and am having some issues that I think are being caused by a misplaced .conf file. When I tried to log into a database I created earlier I get an error

$ psql corporation
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
    Is the server running locally and accepting

Based on the psql docs it looks like the server isn’t running and ps confirms this. Since I don’t remember having to start it last time I used psql I was a little confused, but it seemed easy to fix. Unfortunately, my attempts to start the sever have not worked. Using the first method suggested by the docs gets me

$ postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data
postgres cannot access the server configuration file "/usr/local/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf": No such file or directory

While the second method results in

$postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data >logfile 2>&1 &
[1] 3165

Ps confirms that neither of these methods started postgres, and when I tried to open the database anyway, to double check, it returns a slightly different error message than before.

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"?
[1]+  Exit 2                  postgres -D /usr/local/pgsql/data > logfile 2>&

How to start PostgreSQL server on Mac OS X? seems related, but has some gaps. Just running initdb wasn’t enough, and I don’t seem to have a .conf.sample. Do I just need to create a new .conf from scratch or what?
For reference I’m running Snow Leopard, I originally tried to manually instal psql, but ended up installing brew then brew installing psql.

Answer 1

Have you tried doing a find?

sudo find / -name postgresql*