postgresql-common 154ubuntu1 checks for existence of /var/run/postgresql and terminates before it has change to create via 'start' function in /usr/share/postgresql-common/init.d-functions

[Shaun Johnson]

The init script /etc/init.d/postgresql in Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr has check:

    start|stop|restart|reload)
    if [ -z "`pg_lsclusters -h`" ]; then
        log_warning_msg 'No PostgreSQL clusters exist; see "man pg_createcluster"'
        exit 0
    fi

pg_lsclusters -h command will return an empty string (to STDOUT) if /var/run/postgresql does not exist.

/var/run/postgresql does not get initialized however until the init script can reach a call to 'start' from /usr/share/postgresql-common/init.d-functions:

start() {
    # 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
    [ -x /sbin/restorecon ] && restorecon -R /var/run/postgresql || true
    fi

    do_ctl_all start "$1" "Starting PostgreSQL $1 database server"
}

/var/run is a volatile file system by default in Trusty - so on reboot /var/run/postgresql will not exist.

Essentially, postgresql will fail to start on reboot.