Failure to run postgresql on Mac (after reboot) - linux

Question

Whatever I did I couldn't start postgresql 9.2 on Mac 10.9.3 again after reboot.
$ initdb -D /usr/local/var/postgres
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "alex".
This user must also own the server process.
The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.UTF-8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".
Data page checksums are disabled.
initdb: directory "/usr/local/var/postgres" exists but is not empty
If you want to create a new database system, either remove or empty
the directory "/usr/local/var/postgres" or run initdb
with an argument other than "/usr/local/var/postgres"
I decided I should create another directory in it. So I created data directory there and ran initdb again:
$ initdb -D /usr/local/var/postgres/data
The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "alex".
This user must also own the server process.
The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.UTF-8".
The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
The default text search configuration will be set to "english".
Data page checksums are disabled.
fixing permissions on existing directory /usr/local/var/postgres/data ... initdb:
could not change permissions of directory "/usr/local/var/postgres/data":
Operation not permitted
I tried to change the permissions but didn't figure out what were the right ones. Here is what I have:
$ ls -ald /usr/local/var/postgres
drwxr-xr-x 22 _postgres staff 748 Jun 13 17:26 /usr/local/var/postgres
ls -ald /usr/local/var/postgres/data
drwxr-xr-x 2 _postgres staff 68 Jun 13 17:26 /usr/local/var/postgres/data
$ ls -al /usr/local/var/postgres
total 96
drwxr-xr-x 22 _postgres staff 748 Jun 13 17:26 .
drwx------ 3 alex admin 102 Jun 1 15:08 ..
-rw------- 1 _postgres _postgres 4 Jun 1 15:08 PG_VERSION
drwx------ 6 _postgres _postgres 204 Jun 2 11:40 base
drwxr-xr-x 2 _postgres staff 68 Jun 13 17:26 data
drwx------ 42 _postgres _postgres 1428 Jun 2 14:18 global
drwx------ 3 _postgres _postgres 102 Jun 1 15:08 pg_clog
-rw------- 1 _postgres _postgres 4465 Jun 2 10:58 pg_hba.conf
-rw------- 1 _postgres _postgres 1636 Jun 1 15:08 pg_ident.conf
drwx------ 4 _postgres _postgres 136 Jun 1 15:08 pg_multixact
drwx------ 3 _postgres _postgres 102 Jun 1 18:24 pg_notify
drwx------ 2 _postgres _postgres 68 Jun 1 15:08 pg_serial
drwx------ 2 _postgres _postgres 68 Jun 1 15:08 pg_snapshots
drwx------ 7 _postgres _postgres 238 Jun 2 21:23 pg_stat
drwx------ 2 _postgres _postgres 68 Jun 2 21:23 pg_stat_tmp
drwx------ 3 _postgres _postgres 102 Jun 1 15:08 pg_subtrans
drwx------ 2 _postgres _postgres 68 Jun 1 15:08 pg_tblspc
drwx------ 2 _postgres _postgres 68 Jun 1 15:08 pg_twophase
drwx------ 4 _postgres _postgres 136 Jun 1 15:08 pg_xlog
-rw------- 1 _postgres _postgres 20571 Jun 1 15:08 postgresql.conf
-rw------- 1 _postgres _postgres 79 Jun 1 18:24 postmaster.opts
-rw------- 1 _postgres _postgres 1482 Jun 2 21:23 server.log
What should I do next? I'm out of ideas. The only guess is that it is related to a file or folder permissions.

Answer 1

Two step process:
Go to your web-browser and search for "postgresql permissions data directory" - look down the list for the page from the official manuals (it's the top one for me).
Read the page from the official manuals and follow the instructions.
Presumably it's complaining that it "could not change permissions" because you aren't running this as user "_postgres". Note - it's normally user "postgres". I don't know if the name-change is something you've done or something common on Mac installations.
Oh - and I can't see why this is tagged "linux"