Postgres connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

Question

I am running MacOS 10.14.1 (absolutely new to MacOS), I am unable to run psql command installed through brew, I get the following error, would love some help:

psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

Solutions I have tried

1. brew services start service already running
2. brew services stop postgresql, brew services start postgresql still same error
3. brew remove postgres, brew install postgres, psql still same error
4. brew unlink postgresql && brew link postgresql still same error
5. rm -f /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid my /usr/local/var/ does not contain a postgres/ folder

One more thing to note, when I brew install postgres I get a warning:

Warning: The post-install step did not complete successfully
You can try again using `brew postinstall postgresql`

running brew postinstall postgresql gives the same warning.

Hopefully provided enough information to go by, happy to provide more.

Answer 1

The reason for this is that the process is running but the postmaster.pid file is missing from /usr/local/var/postgres/, so you need to start the process for Postgres which creates postmaster.pid.

If the process is already running,

Stop it manually using the command below:

pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres stop -s -m fast

Start it manually using the command below:

pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start

now all should be working just fine.