dockerized postgres - lock file "postmaster.pid" is empty

Question

I'm experiencing issues using the official Postgres docker image, something that never happened on this machine. I'm using that through docker-compose but when running docker-compose up, the db container does not start, here's the error:

db_1         | 2019-04-19 22:20:27.180 UTC [1] FATAL:  lock file "postmaster.pid" is empty
db_1         | 2019-04-19 22:20:27.180 UTC [1] HINT:  Either another server is starting, or the lock file is the remnant of a previous server startup crash.

I tried several times to remove the image so it then will be re-pulled, but hasn't solved the problem.

I'm using Docker for Mac 2.0.0.3 (31259)

here's the docker-compose.yml:

version: '2'
services:
  web:
    build: .
    entrypoint: sh -c "python3 /var/www/my_project/manage.py migrate --noinput &&
                python3 /var/www/my_project/manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000"
    restart: on-failure
    ports:
      - "9001:8000"
    volumes:
      - .:/var/www/my_project
    depends_on:
    - db
    env_file:
      - ./.env
    environment:
      - DB_SERVER=db
      - DB_NAME=postgres
      - DB_USER=postgres
  db:
    ports:
        - "9432:5432"
    image: postgres
    volumes:
      - database:/var/lib/postgresql
volumes:
  database:

Any help on this?

Answer 1

You can try to remove the pid file manually from the volume mounted by the container. Something like this:

Search the volume:

docker inspect container-name

Search for the directory where the volume is stored:

...
"Mounts": [
  {
    "Type": "volume",
    "Name": "9009b4e54686dc36f797a15fd8fc09213f3e8949583b823525881c010f2fe347",
    "Source": "/var/lib/docker/volumes/9009b4e54686dc36f797a15fd8fc09213f3e8949583b823525881c010f2fe347/_data",

Now delete the pid file:

rm /var/lib/docker/volumes/9009b4e54686dc36f797a15fd8fc09213f3e8949583b823525881c010f2fe347/_data/

After this you might get this error message:

lock file "/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432.lock" is empty

This can be fixed by overwriting that file with a file containing a number:

echo 12345 > bla
docker cp bla container-name:/var/run/postgresql/.s.PGSQL.5432.lock
docker restart container-name