Trouble starting postgresql

[Alan M. Evans]

Hello!

On my FC5 server, I wanted to configure postgresql to use
/home/pgsql/data instead of /var/lib/pgsql/data. (/home partition is
huge and doesn't get formatted when system is upgraded or new system
installed.) I created the directory, ran initdb; everything seemed ok.

Research seemed to tell me that I should perform the reconfiguration in
/etc/sysconfig/pgsql. However, I could not start the service when the
new directory was specified there. Much experimentation led me to this:

[root@citadel ~]# rm -f /home/pgsql/pgstartup.log
[root@citadel ~]# cp /etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql
/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql2
cp: overwrite `/etc/rc.d/init.d/postgresql2'? y
[root@citadel ~]# cp /etc/sysconfig/pgsql/postgresql
/etc/sysconfig/pgsql/postgresql2
cp: overwrite `/etc/sysconfig/pgsql/postgresql2'? y
[root@citadel ~]# cat /etc/sysconfig/pgsql/postgresql
PGDATA=/home/pgsql/data
PGLOG=/home/pgsql/pgstartup.log
[root@citadel ~]# service postgresql start
Starting postgresql service:                               [FAILED]
[root@citadel ~]# service postgresql2 start
Starting postgresql2 service:                              [  OK  ]
[root@citadel ~]# service postgresql2 stop
Stopping postgresql2 service:                              [  OK  ]
[root@citadel ~]# cat /home/pgsql/pgstartup.log
postmaster cannot access the server configuration file
"/home/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf": Permission denied
LOG:  logger shutting down
[root@citadel ~]#

To sum up: I made an exact copy of the server startup script and an
exact copy of my configuration script. The copy starts, but the original
fails.

Obviously, I'm missing something fundamental here. Any help is
appreciated as I am at the end of ideas.