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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-09T23:37:23+00:00

Update 2 – I have uninstalled and reinstalled the packages from within root (i.e.

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Update 2 – I have uninstalled and reinstalled the packages from within root (i.e. su), rather than sudo-ing in with my own account. This allowed executables to be run from /tmp, which got rid of the error from the first update.

Update – Just tried uninstalling and reinstalling (apt-get remove –purge postgresql, then apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib postgresql-client) and got this error, which I suspect is related to my problems:*

Can't exec "/tmp/postgresql-common.config.32601": Permission denied at  /usr/share/perl/5.14/IPC/Open3.pm line 186.
open2: exec of /tmp/postgresql-common.config.32601 configure  failed at /usr/share/perl5/Debconf/ConfModule.pm line 59

I am having trouble starting postgreSQL and was hoping to get some help.

I’ve already studied the answers and comments from the following posts – and tried pg_dropcluster and pg_createcluster – but have had no luck configuring postgreSQL 9.1 to start on Ubuntu 12.04. (I was able to setup and configure postgreSQL on windows with no problems, however.)

Postgresql failed to start

– I should note the answer given here seems helpful, but since I’m new to Linux, I couldn’t follow it. I also wonder if there is an easier way. The OP has also not accepted an answer, so I am not sure if this actually solves the problem.

Postgresql changing data directory in ubuntu

I suspect that the OP had the exact same problem that I am having, since I am getting the same error messages, and there is also no log file output despite the error message in the terminal. 

pg_ctl: could not start server

Examine the log output.

PostgreSQL 9.1 did not start in a timely fashion, please see opt/PostgreSQL/9.1/data/pg_log/startup.log for details
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    Of all the tutorials on the web, this is the one that finally worked for me.

    http://codingforme.wordpress.com/2012/05/15/installing-postgresql-database-and-pgadmin-iii-in-ubuntu-12-04/

    I did a “pg_dropcluster 9.1 main”, and then “pg_createcluster 9.1 main start”, and then followed it EXACTLY.

    The main difference being that the other tutorials fail to create a user within postgresql, instead, only creating a user within unix. Perhaps this is a due to version differences. Again, I am using postgresql 9.1.5 and am on ubuntu 12.04.

    ALSO… Don’t forget to apt-get install libpq-dev

    Hope this helps anyone else in my situation.

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