Postgresql 9.3 on Centos 7 with custom PGDATA

Question

I am trying to set up Postgresql 9.3 server on Centos 7 (installation via yum) inside a custom directory, which in my case is an encrypted partition (/custom_container/database) that is mounted on startup. For a certain reason Postgresql does not behave like it should in the manual and makes an error on service startup.

Note: It does not want to accept the PGDATA environment variable which I set, and when running

su - postgres -c '/usr/pgsql-9.3/bin/initdb'

(given that the PGDATA directory is owned by postgres:postgres) the cluster gets initialized inside the default directory /var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data/ The only way to change that is using

su - postgres -c '/usr/pgsql-9.3/bin/initdb --pgdata=$PGDATA'

Which initializes the directory inside the custom container I am using. This is something I could not figure out, as the docs say that PGDATA variable is taken on default.

Problem: When running

service postgresql-9.3 start

I get an error with the log

postgresql-9.3.service - PostgreSQL 9.3 database server
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service; disabled)
Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2014-11-10 15:24:15 CET; 1s ago
Process: 2785 ExecStartPre=/usr/pgsql-9.3/bin/postgresql93-check-db-dir ${PGDATA} (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)

Nov 10 15:24:15 CentOS-70-64-minimal systemd[1]: Starting PostgreSQL 9.3 database server...
Nov 10 15:24:15 CentOS-70-64-minimal postgresql93-check-db-dir[2785]: "/var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data/" is missing or empty.
Nov 10 15:24:15 CentOS-70-64-minimal postgresql93-check-db-dir[2785]: Use "/usr/pgsql-9.3/bin/postgresql93-setup initdb" to initialize t...ster.
Nov 10 15:24:15 CentOS-70-64-minimal postgresql93-check-db-dir[2785]: See %{_pkgdocdir}/README.rpm-dist for more information.
Nov 10 15:24:15 CentOS-70-64-minimal systemd[1]: postgresql-9.3.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1
Nov 10 15:24:15 CentOS-70-64-minimal systemd[1]: Failed to start PostgreSQL 9.3 database server.
Nov 10 15:24:15 CentOS-70-64-minimal systemd[1]: Unit postgresql-9.3.service entered failed state.

Which means that Postgresql, even though the cluster is initialized in the new $PGDATA directory (/custom_container/database) still looks for the cluster in /var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data/

Did anyone experience this Postgresql behavior before? Could it be that I forgot certain configuration options or that the problem comes from Postgresql installation?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

It appears the real problem was setting the environment variables, which I got working in the following thread: Centos 7 environment variables for Postgres service The issue is the PGDATA variable set inside the custom /etc/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service which should be created from the contents of /usr/lib/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service which uses the default PGDATA var.