[Pkg-postgresql-public] Bug#703806: postgresql: failed to start: couldn't create TCP/IP Sockets

[Christoph Berg]

Re: Christian Meyer 2013-04-19 <1366407520.13657.15.camel at Imperator>
> Yes, it is.

Hi Christian,

thanks for the feedback.

> # host localhost
> ;; Warning: Message parser reports malformed message packet.
> localhost has address 127.0.0.1
> Host localhost not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
> Host localhost not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)
> 
> Sorry, I have no glue what this warning means or how to fix it.

This looks like a broken nameserver. Probably the NXDOMAIN are for
AAAA (ipv6) queries.

Could you try "options single-request" in /etc/resolv.conf to see if
that fixes the problem with "host localhost" and PostgreSQL?

> # ping localhost
> PING localhost (127.0.0.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
> 
> So localhost seems to resolve to 127.0.0.1

ping is special because it explictely asks for A (ipv4) records. ipv6
is handled by ping6.

> > Does the problem go away if you change listen_addresses in the config?
> 
> I changed the file /etc/postgresql/9.1/main/postgresql.conf :
> before:
> #listen_addresses = 'localhost'		# what IP address(es) to listen on;
> 
> Test 1 (Problem still persists):
> listen_addresses = '127.0.0.1'
> 
> Test 2 (Problem seems gone):
> listen_addresses = '*'
> 
> Tried (et voilla):
> # /etc/init.d/postgresql restart
> [ ok ] Restarting PostgreSQL 9.1 database server: main.

Not sure if I read that correctly, did you mean that "Test 1" was
still done with "localhost", and "Test 2" was with 127.0.0.1 and the
problem was gone?

> Thanks for your hint. So I think it's not a problem of postgresql, but
> what went wrong and where?
> Anyway. Thank you. If I can anything else for you, just let me know.

We have had reports about PostgreSQL breaking because of missing
localhost resolution before. Yours is new, but probably the same
problem - PostgreSQL needs to be able to resolve localhost to set up
the listening socket, and also for internal udp communication between
the backends (more specifically, for the stats collector).

Christoph
-- 
cb at df7cb.de | http://www.df7cb.de/