The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference: 4006
Logged by: David Schweikert
Email address: david@schweikert.ch
PostgreSQL version: 8.3.0
Operating system: Linux
Description: pg_ctl assumes that all config files lie in
data_directory
Details:

pg_ctl doesn't work if you put postgresql.conf in a different directory than
the database data files. According to the documentation, this is however
considered a good practice:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.3/i...file-locations
..html

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"David Schweikert" <david@schweikert.ch> writes:
> pg_ctl doesn't work if you put postgresql.conf in a different directory than
> the database data files.

Yeah, this is a known limitation that seems unlikely to get fixed soon,
as doing it right would appear to require giving pg_ctl the ability to
parse the config file completely.

regards, tom lane

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Tom Lane wrote:
> "David Schweikert" <david@schweikert.ch> writes:
> > pg_ctl doesn't work if you put postgresql.conf in a different directory than
> > the database data files.
>
> Yeah, this is a known limitation that seems unlikely to get fixed soon,
> as doing it right would appear to require giving pg_ctl the ability to
> parse the config file completely.

FYI, it is a TODO item:

* Allow pg_ctl to work properly with configuration files located outside
the PGDATA directory

pg_ctl can not read the pid file because it isn't located in the
config directory but in the PGDATA directory. The solution is to
allow pg_ctl to read and understand postgresql.conf to find the
data_directory value.

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Bruce Momjian <bruce@momjian.us> http://momjian.us
EnterpriseDB http://postgres.enterprisedb.com

+ If your life is a hard drive, Christ can be your backup. +

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Hi,

On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 12:12:16 -0500, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> pg_ctl can not read the pid file because it isn't located in the
> config directory but in the PGDATA directory. The solution is to
> allow pg_ctl to read and understand postgresql.conf to find the
> data_directory value.

What about adding a command-line option to specify a different
configuration file? That would be certainly less nice, but also much
easier to implement, I guess.

Cheers
David

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