Today I upgraded my postgresql database instance on OpenBSD. Did a pg_dumpall, removed the old packages and then added the new ones (latest version 8.1.9 for OpenBSD 4.0 - yes I’m behind).
During the initialisation of the new DB, I got the following error:
creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_tblspc ... ok selecting default max_connections ... 10 selecting default shared_buffers ... 50 creating configuration files ... ok creating template1 database in /var/postgresql/data/base/1 ... FATAL: could not create semaphores: No space left on device DETAIL: Failed system call was semget(1, 17, 03600).
The PostgreSQL documentation talks about this extensively. However I don’t want to recompile my kernel away from default. What else can I do?
AFAIK It is not possible to pass the max_connections to initdb.
After some searching, I found the solution. It looks like the problem is that the semaphores from the old installation are still hanging around, and never got cleaned up. You can use ipcs and ipcrm to clean then up and run your initdb again.
First list the existing semaphores:
server:~# ipcs Message Queues: T ID KEY MODE OWNER GROUP Shared Memory: T ID KEY MODE OWNER GROUP m 65536 5432001 --rw------- _postgresql _postgresql Semaphores: T ID KEY MODE OWNER GROUP s 1376256 0 --rw------- www www s 1245185 0 --rw------- www www s 65538 5432001 --rw------- _postgresql _postgresql s 65539 5432002 --rw------- _postgresql _postgresql s 65540 5432003 --rw------- _postgresql _postgresql s 65541 5419 --rw-r--r-- www www
You want to remove the semaphore sets according to the ipcrm man page:
server:~# ipcrm -s 65538 server:~# ipcrm -s 65539 server:~# ipcrm -s 65540
Using ipcs shows the _postgresql semaphores gone:
Semaphores: T ID KEY MODE OWNER GROUP s 1376256 0 --rw------- www www s 1245185 0 --rw------- www www s 65541 5419 --rw-r--r-- www www
Now you can switch to the postgres account and run your initdb:
server:/usr/local/share/postgresql# su - _postgresql #initdb The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "_postgresql". This user must also own the server process. The database cluster will be initialized with locale C. creating directory /var/postgresql/data ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/global ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_xlog ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_xlog/archive_status ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_clog ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_subtrans ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_twophase ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_multixact/members ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_multixact/offsets ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/base ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/base/1 ... ok creating directory /var/postgresql/data/pg_tblspc ... ok selecting default max_connections ... 40 selecting default shared_buffers ... 1000 creating configuration files ... ok creating template1 database in /var/postgresql/data/base/1 ... ok
And so on it goes successfully creating your initial DB.
I hope this helps someone else!
