[monit] Postgresql weirdness: ESTrootFATAL

[David Paper]

Hi monit gurus,

While I anxiously await 5.0 getting out of beta, I have run into the  
following problem w/ postgres: When started via monit, postgres spits  
out the following errors every 22 seconds in the postgres startup log::

2008-11-13 16:07:04 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist
2008-11-13 16:07:04 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist
2008-11-13 16:07:04 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist
2008-11-13 16:07:04 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist
2008-11-13 16:07:26 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist
2008-11-13 16:07:26 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist
2008-11-13 16:07:26 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist
2008-11-13 16:07:26 ESTrootFATAL:  database "root" does not exist

4 entries in each group, forever.
Environment: Monit v 4.10.1 (started out of inittab), Postgres 8.3.4,  
SuSE Linux 11.0 x86-64.

This is what the monit job looks like:

check process postgresql with pidfile /opt/postgres/data/postmaster.pid
   group database
   start program = "/opt/postgres/bin/pg_ctl start"
        as uid postgres and gid postgres
   stop  program = "/opt/postgres/bin/pg_ctl stop"
        as uid postgres and gid postgres
   if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then restart
   if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then alert
   if failed host localhost port 5432             protocol pgsql then  
restart
   if failed host localhost port 5432             protocol pgsql then  
alert
   if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

I've also tried doing it like this:

check process postgresql with pidfile /opt/postgres/data/postmaster.pid
   group database
   start program = "/etc/init.d/postgresql start"
   stop  program = "/etc/init.d/postgresql stop"
   if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then restart
   if failed unixsocket /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 protocol pgsql then alert
   if failed host localhost port 5432             protocol pgsql then  
restart
   if failed host localhost port 5432             protocol pgsql then  
alert
   if 5 restarts within 5 cycles then timeout

Same result.

If I fire up postgres manually using the following methods, I don't  
see the error:

su - postgres; /opt/postgres/bin/pg_ctl start
su - postgres; /opt/postgres/bin/pg_ctl start -w -D /opt/postgres/data  
-l /opt/postgres/data/startup.log
su - postgres -c "LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/postgres/lib /opt/postgres/bin/ 
pg_ctl -w start -D \"/opt/postgres/data\" -l \"/opt/postgres/data/ 
startup.log\""
(as root) /etc/init.d/postgresql start

It seems that only when fired up via a monit job is this an issue.

According to our DB guy, the error means that postgres is trying to  
find a database called "root", which of course, doesn't exist.

I know that Monit doesn't set any environment variables at time of  
start up of a jobs process. but I'm baffled as to where this is coming  
from.

Has anyone else that's running postgres seen this?

Thanks!

-dave

--
Dave Paper

"Hello, I must be going." --Groucho