Nothing can happen to a database unless the postmaster
process is running. As the site administrator, there
are a number of things you should remember before
starting the postmaster. These are discussed in the
section of this manual titled, "Administering Postgres."
However, if Postgres has been installed by following
the installation instructions exactly as written, the
following simple command is all you should
need to start the postmaster:
% postmaster
The postmaster occasionally prints out messages which
are often helpful during troubleshooting. If you wish
to view debugging messages from the postmaster, you can
start it with the -d option and redirect the output to
the log file:
% postmaster -d >& pm.log &
If you do not wish to see these messages, you can type
% postmaster -S
and the postmaster will be "S"ilent. Notice that there
is no ampersand ("&") at the end of the last example.