pgpool2 cannot start after reboot

[John-Scott Atlakson]

1) The release of Ubuntu you are using, via 'lsb_release -rd' or System -> About Ubuntu

Description: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
Release: 12.04

2) The version of the package you are using, via 'apt-cache policy pkgname' or by checking in Software Center

pgpool2:
  Installed: 3.1.1-1
  Candidate: 3.1.1-1
  Version table:
 *** 3.1.1-1 0
        500 http://mirror.rackspace.com/ubuntu/ precise/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

3) What you expected to happen

pgpool2, like all other long-running services, should automatically start after a reboot.

4) What happened instead

pgpool2 fails to restart after reboot because the /var/run/postgresql directory is missing. From /var/syslog:

Nov 14 20:51:57 test-app pgpool: 2012-11-14 20:51:57 ERROR: pid 1300: could not open pid file as /var/run/postgresql/pgpool.pid. reason: No such file or directory

This is a regression of a bug that was addressed years ago but apparently wasn't fixed upstream, so it's been reintroduced (see => https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/pgpool2/+bug/314837).

The /etc/init.d/pgpool2 script needs to follow convention and source /usr/share/postgresql-common/init.d-functions which internally ensures /var/run/postgresql exists. However, if you call `/etc/init.d/pgpool2 start`, this internally calls 'd_start()', so the 'start()' function in the init.d-functions is never called, so in this case it's not as simple as just sourcing the common init.d-functions. For now I've monkey-patched /etc/init.d/pgpool2's d_start() function:

d_start() {
        if is_running; then
                :
        else
                # create socket directory
                if [ -d /var/run/postgresql ]; then
                    chmod 2775 /var/run/postgresql
                else
                    install -d -m 2775 -o postgres -g postgres /var/run/postgresql
                fi
                su -c "$DAEMON -n $OPTS 2>&1 </dev/null | logger -t pgpool -p ${PGPOOL_SYSLOG_FACILITY:-local0}.info >/dev/null 2>&1 &" - postgres
        fi
}

Here are the minimum steps to reproduce on a new install:

root@test-app:~# apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install pgpool2
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libpgpool0 libpq5 postgresql-client-common postgresql-common ssl-cert

root@test-app:~# ls /var/run/postgresql/
pgpool.pid

root@test-app:~# reboot

root@test-app:~# ls /var/run/postgresql/
ls: cannot access /var/run/postgresql/: No such file or directory

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.