Tests using embedded postgres fail with Illegal State Exception

Question

I'm running some tests against an embedded postgres database using otj-pg-embedded. While the tests run fine locally they fail when run by Gitlab-CI with an Illegal State Exception. Gitlab CI builds it and runs tests that don't include otj-pg-embedded just fine.

I've commented out most of the test class and pinpointed the problem to:

public static SingleInstancePostgresRule pg = EmbeddedPostgresRules.singleInstance();

import com.goldfinger.models.AuditLog;
import com.opentable.db.postgres.embedded.FlywayPreparer;
import com.opentable.db.postgres.junit.EmbeddedPostgresRules;
import com.opentable.db.postgres.junit.PreparedDbRule;
import org.junit.*;
import org.junit.runner.RunWith;
import org.springframework.jdbc.core.namedparam.NamedParameterJdbcTemplate;
import org.springframework.test.context.junit4.SpringJUnit4ClassRunner;

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
public class SQLAuditRepositoryTest {

    private static SQLAuditRepository sqlAuditRepository;
    private static AuditLog auditLog_1;
    private static AuditLog auditLog_2;
    private static AuditLog auditLog_3;
    private static List<AuditLog> auditLogList;

    @ClassRule
        public static SingleInstancePostgresRule pg = EmbeddedPostgresRules.singleInstance();


    @Test
    public void simpleTest() {
        assert (2 == 2);
    }
}

This is the stack trace:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Process [/tmp/embedded-pg/PG-06e3a92a2edb6ddd6dbdf5602d0252ca/bin/initdb, -A, trust, -U, postgres, -D, /tmp/epg6584640257265165384, -E, UTF-8] failed

    at com.opentable.db.postgres.embedded.EmbeddedPostgres.system(EmbeddedPostgres.java:626)
    at com.opentable.db.postgres.embedded.EmbeddedPostgres.initdb(EmbeddedPostgres.java:240)
...
... many lines here
...
    at org.gradle.internal.concurrent.ThreadFactoryImpl$ManagedThreadRunnable.run(ThreadFactoryImpl.java:55)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:745)

This is the gitlab-ci.yml

image: java:latest
services:
  - postgres:latest
before_script:
  - export GRADLE_USER_HOME=`pwd`/.gradle

package:
  stage: build
  script:
    - ./gradlew assemble

test:
  stage: test
  script:
  - ./gradlew check
  artifacts:
    reports:
      junit: build/test-results/test/*.xml

Any help will be appreciated.

Answer 1

If stopped after upgrading to macOS 11.x+ (to BigSur)

For Mac users (especially the new BigSur), there's already an issue open for this problem.

There's not yet a definitive "fix", but I've got things working by installing postgresql via:

brew install postgresql

Not sure if the same applies to other OS.

Answer 2

I had a similar problem running tests with embedded postgres on MacOS M1:

java.lang.IllegalStateException: Process [/var/folders/g_/jxzv9glj0p13njlzpr9xtcfm0000gn/T/embedded-pg/PG-4f38c8a8b2500189835f8ec1b75de81b/bin/initdb, -A, trust, -U, postgres, -D, /var/folders/g_/jxzv9glj0p13njlzpr9xtcfm0000gn/T/pg-embedded-009358be-3e95-4dbe-aa7a-01a9008511cb-3277843270072134584/epg524445573999525527, -E, UTF-8] failed

I copy pasted the command and run it on shell:

/var/folders/g_/jxzv9glj0p13njlzpr9xtcfm0000gn/T/embedded-pg/PG-4f38c8a8b2500189835f8ec1b75de81b/bin/initdb -A trust -U postgres -D /var/folders/g_/jxzv9glj0p13njlzpr9xtcfm0000gn/T/pg-embedded-009358be-3e95-4dbe-aa7a-01a9008511cb-3277843270072134584/epg524445573999525527 -E UTF-8

and the output show me a hint:

Running bootstrap script ... 2021-02-17 08:18:21.008 WET [28692] FATAL:  could not create shared memory segment: Cannot allocate memory
2021-02-17 08:18:21.008 WET [28692] DETAIL:  Failed system call was shmget(key=5432001, size=56, 03600).
2021-02-17 08:18:21.008 WET [28692] HINT:  This error usually means that PostgreSQL's request for a shared memory segment exceeded your kernel's SHMALL parameter.  You might need to reconfigure the kernel with larger SHMALL.
    The PostgreSQL documentation contains more information about shared memory configuration.
child process exited with exit code 1
initdb: removing contents of data directory "/var/folders/g_/jxzv9glj0p13njlzpr9xtcfm0000gn/T/pg-embedded-cbe6f5f8-24b2-4431-afec-6e7aeb1dbb5d-8656684715588054403/epg6904898061245880853"

Then I run on shell:

sudo sysctl kern.sysv.shmmax=104857600
sudo sysctl kern.sysv.shmall=25600

And it worked.