Broken brew-installed postgresql on lion

Question

I know there are a lot of lion-postgresql related questions on stack overflow already, but none seem to solve my problem.

I installed the homebrew of postgresql and everything was fine after that. Then I messed around a bit with the the libpq.dylib link in /usr/lib so that an application would link to the brew installed version rather than the OS-installed version. Somehow I managed to break my install while doing this in such a way that any call to psql gives the following error:

>psql
psql: invalid connection option "client_encoding"

reinstalling postgresql with 'brew remove postgresql' and another 'brew install postgresql' doesn't seem to help (same error). I've also relinked /usr/lib/libpq.dylib to be /usr/lib/libpq.5.dylib, which is what I believe it was before.

Also, a potentially related problem is that my postgres server doesn't seem to want to shut down:

>pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres stop -s -m fast     
pg_ctl: server does not shut down

Anyone have any clues as to what is wrong? Alternatively, how would I completely uninstall and reinstall the postgres server and client?

Answer 1

Try /usr/local/bin/psql. If that doesn't work, take a look at which psql.

Lion comes with a installation of postgresql running, and you might be using the stock psql instead of the brew psql.

Or that one might be running, and using the brew psql to connect to the Lion postgres instance.

Verify that /usr/local/bin is before /usr/bin in $PATH. Check echo $PATH.

Answer 2

Fix that worked for me:

• if you use pgAdmin:

  show server_encoding;
  

  -bash-4.1$ export PGCLIENTENCODING='UTF8' -bash-4.1$ psql

psql (9.3.3) Type "help" for help.

postgres=# \l ...

put var in .profile or .bashrc

Answer 3

If you installed postgresql via homebrew:

brew update
brew doctor

Unexpected dylibs: /usr/local/lib/libpq.5.dylib

Unexpected .la files: /usr/local/lib/psqlodbcw.la

brew upgrade postgresql

Error: The brew link step did not complete successfully

brew link --overwrite postgresql

Then you should be fine to run the psql command.