66

I get this error every this I run my Rails app (It cannot connect to my local Postgresql)

/Users/leonardo/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p362/gems/activerecord-3.2.11/lib/
active_record/connection_adapters/postgresql_adapter.rb:1208:in `initialize': 
could not connect to server: No such file or directory (PG::Error)
   Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

I'm using Postgres.app that it's correctly running.

If I run

$ psql

I can login properly to Postgresql console.

$ which psql
 /Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin/psql

Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'
ruby "1.9.3"

gem 'rails', '3.2.11'
gem "pg"

database.yml

development:
  adapter: postgresql
  encoding: unicode
  username: leonardo
  password: 
  database: zapping
  port: 5432

Postgresql (Console)

$ psql
leonardo=# \l

enter image description here

sparkle
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    can you try add `host: localhost` to your database.yml ? (based on that answer : http://stackoverflow.com/a/10793186/919641) – pjam Jan 08 '13 at 22:32
  • If you add it in "answers" I will marked as accepted – sparkle Jan 08 '13 at 22:38

15 Answers15

138

Try adding host: localhost to your database.yml. (Based on: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10793186/919641)

Community
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pjam
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26

Your Pg gem was compiled against the PostgreSQL libpq pre-installed in Mac OS X and you're using the psql that you installed in a newer version, or vice versa.

This can be worked around by specifying a TCP/IP connection, by adding localhost to database.yml, but it's better to compile the Pg gem against the libpq for the server you're actually running. To do that, you should be able to set the PATH environment variable to the folder with the correct pg_config in it before compiling. In your case that'll be somewhere within Postgres.app.

Rimian
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Craig Ringer
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    Craig, can you please elaborate this one? Where and which env. variable should I set exactly? – Rizon Jan 19 '13 at 23:23
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    Thanks, this answer helped me fix it. The steps I took were simple: 1) `gem uninstall pg`, 2) `bundle install`, done. – haslo Dec 03 '13 at 20:27
  • Perfect answer, and although updating `database.yml` works too, I think this is probably the best and most correct solution for this problem. If you've, say, installed Postgresql via Homebrew *after* installing `pg`, you might see this error. Then follow @haslo's instructions above. – SexxLuthor Feb 07 '18 at 10:20
25

If it does not work even after adding host: localhost, remove the postmaster.pid

rm /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid

Pradyumna Shembekar
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  • This solved the problem that I had. Even though running `brew services start postgresql` said it was successful, running `ps x | grep postgres` showed no server running. I followed the steps here (which include removing the `postmaster.pid`) and it solved the problem for me: https://coderwall.com/p/zf-fww/postgres-on-osx-with-homebrew-not-running-after-osx-crash – Mike Vallano Sep 11 '17 at 16:30
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    This works if your computer crashes and you do a forced shutdown but postgres wasn't properly terminated, sometimes the pid file will get stuck there... removing it helps get it going again. – Joshua F. Rountree Oct 25 '17 at 13:57
  • No no no do NOT do this! It's *only* OK if you verify that *no* postgres processes are still running. It should rarely if ever be necessary; it can only arise if some other process happens to get assigned the pid the postmaster had. – Craig Ringer Feb 07 '18 at 12:16
  • Should be okay for local postgres connections. – Pradyumna Shembekar Feb 09 '18 at 05:17
  • This was my problem, I don't understand the reply above from @CraigRinger what is the harm in this? It was immediately rebuilt for me by the service when it finally started. – David Greco Sep 23 '18 at 02:41
  • @DavidGreco `postmaster.pid` serves as an interlock that stops one postgres from starting while another is still writing to the database file. If you remove it, you might have two (or more) postgres processes writing to the same database without coordinating with each other, resulting in massive database corruption. So *do not do it* unless you have made *absolutely sure* no other postgres processes are surviving and accessing the same data directory. – Craig Ringer Oct 09 '18 at 08:32
11

you should add host: localhost to your db config...

pjam
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BvuRVKyUVlViVIc7
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7

I had this issue. One of the comments here helped me fix the issue.

Thanks, this answer helped me fix it. The steps I took were simple: 1) gem uninstall pg, 2) bundle install, done. – haslo Dec 3 '13 at 20:27

gem uninstall pg
bundle install
Jared Menard
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6

I had the same problem on a Mac. Turns out that the psql I had on my path wasn't working correctly. Try launching psql by typing:

~/projects/some_project/project-rails$ psql
  psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

If you see this, it indicates the psql binary on your path is attempting to connect using socket and unable to do so (for whatever reason). Since I had already downloaded pgadmin and it was connecting fine, I knew it wasn't an issue with the server.

Fixed it by adding the right version of pgsql to my PATH:

export PATH=/Applications/Postgres.app/Contents/MacOS/bin:$PATH

Now psql (and rails) are happy!

paneer_tikka
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6

I had this same issue. You have to actually run / start postgres. Postgres must have stopped running on my computer recently, so I had to make sure it's running by starting the postgres server

postgres -D /usr/local/var/postgres

Then the following commands (which were causing me the same error you had) all worked:

bundle exec rake db:create db:migrate
bundle exec rspec
L. Stepanek
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6

Since This was the first post that appeared in my search result, I have decided to post the updated fix for this. Since none of the above suggestion worked for me. 

brew postgresql-upgrade-database

It upgraded postgresql data and moved my old version. I was on 9.6 instead of 10.4

Found the solution here

Mr. Rene
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5

find / -name 'postgresql.conf'

netstat -an | grep 5432 # => /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432

vi /Users/admin/Library/Application\ Support/Postgres93/var/postgresql.conf

FROM: unix_socket_directories = '/tmp'

TO: unix_socket_directories = '/var/pgsql_socket'

sudo mkdir /var/pgsql_socket

sudo chmod 777 /var/pgsql_socket

the-teacher
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  • This solution, ultimately in my case, would have fixed my issue with Rails not being able to start. I went a little different approach on the way to realizing this. I actually created a symlink as described in [This Post](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9466146/repairing-postgresql-after-upgrading-to-osx-10-7-3-lion#) – rwheadon Mar 16 '14 at 04:55
2

For heroku this is all you need.

heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql

production:
 adapter: postgresql
 encoding: unicode
 host: localhost
 # For details on connection pooling, see rails configuration guide
 # http://guides.rubyonrails.org/configuring.html#database-pooling
 pool: 5
jmontross
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0

I just had the problem that the postgres app wasn't running on my mac...

Yoko
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On Mac, I had different versions of postgresql. This problem has been solved when I tried brew switch postgresql 9.5.5 (I don't think version number matters at this point) 

$ brew switch postgresql 9.5.5
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.6.1
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.6.5
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/10.2
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/10.3
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.5.5
Cleaning /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.5.4

All data will be gone away, by the way. I guess there's a brew command for doing this without switching version, which I couldn't find.

kangkyu
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0

I had the same problem on OS High sierra 10.13 I followed the instructions from this website I downloaded version 10.4 ref: https://postgresapp.com/

Then I added this to bash profile: export PATH=$PATH:/Library/PostgreSQL/10.4/bin:$PATH

re start terminal.

Open new window terminal and then type: psql -U postgres

after that you will see this message: psql (10.4) Type "help" for help.

postgres=#

0

My problem was that the /etc/hosts file changed and didn't have this crucial entry: 127.0.0.1 localhost

dani24
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I had a similar issue - when I ran psql command in terminal I still got the same error, so that told me that it wasn't a problem with the pg gem and I should check the postgres setup itself. So I checked the postgres logs - in my case they were located at /usr/local/var/log/postgres.log and I saw the following error:

dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/icu4c/lib/libicui18n.66.dylib
  Referenced from: /usr/local/opt/postgresql/bin/postgres

So knowing the exact error helped me resolve the issue, in my case based on this answer I ran

brew switch icu4c 66.1

which resolved the issue after restarting postgres:

brew services restart postgresql
Ben
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