Postgresql – Ubuntu, postgresql, show whole running sql command

Ubuntu or Debian can run multiple instances of PostgreSQL and provide a specific way to autostart/stop/start each cluster.

There should be a file named start.conf inside /etc/postgresql/9.2/main (or more generally /etc/postgresql/<version>/<clustername>) with these self-explanatory contents:

# Automatic startup configuration
# auto: automatically start/stop the cluster in the init script
# manual: do not start/stop in init scripts, but allow manual startup with
#         pg_ctlcluster
# disabled: do not allow manual startup with pg_ctlcluster (this can be easily
#           circumvented and is only meant to be a small protection for
#           accidents).

auto

If you replace auto by manual, you could start this PostgreSQL instance only when desired with the command:

sudo pg_ctlcluster 9.2 main start

As for looking at the console, what you should want instead is having this run in a terminal when you work with the database:

tail -f /var/log/postgresql/postgresql-9.2-main.log

If you haven't set up the environment variables, then you need to specify the full path to your executables.

What version of Postgresql are you using? You show a link to 8.3 which is many years old. These docs are current: http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/creating-cluster.html

Did you install Postgresql with an up-to-date package, a la http://www.postgresql.org/download/linux/ubuntu/ ?

When installing 9.2 on Ubuntu, I added the following lines to the ~postgres/.bash_profile

export PATH=/usr/lib/postgresql/9.2/bin:$PATH:/usr/sbin
export PGDATA=/var/lib/postgresql/9.2/main
export PGPORT=5432

Where "/usr/lib/postgresql/9.2/bin" is the path to your 9.2 executables. That made the installation a bit smoother for me.