Heroku PostgresApp - Fails to start with edited postgresql.conf

Question

I am trying to tune my local pg running from the Heroku Postgress App.

I am seeing strange errors in the OSX console whenever I change some of the internal settings:

 PM Postgres[78709]: Could not connect the action selectPostgresStatus: to target of class AppDelegate

In the above case, setting wal_buffers to any value other than the default in the conf results in PG being inaccessible.

Other config settings have a similar effect.

Is there a trick to configuring Postgres.app?

Answer 1

This is probably a kernel resources issue. Check the PostgreSQL log files to see for sure. They should be in the pg_log directory, alongside postgresql.conf.

The PostgreSQL documentation on kernel resources has a section on increasing shared memory limits for Mac OS X.

Note that increasing some settings in postgresql.conf also requires you to increase shared_buffers. This is usually documented in the info about that configuration option on the PostgreSQL site, and you'll be told in the PostgreSQL logs if you need to increase shared_buffers.