The Compass Point North

Solving the Postgres Database Issue in Synology DSM

James -

Power trip twice in an hour caused my DSM to enter into an error state. A few packages did not run successfully.

  • Drive
  • Contacts
  • MailPlus
  • Synology Application Services
  • Synology Photos
  • Video Station

It could not be repaired automatically and it state a dependency on the Synology Application Services. (Which I think it is Postgres SQL now). An trying to start it throws a pgsql-adapter.service is not available. These applications store metadata in Postgres Database.

Although not an expert on either the DSM OS or the Postgres DB, I know enough to start troubleshooting. So I enabled SSH and digged in.

Step 1: Check the logs

more /var/log/postgres.log

Compared it for the old logs.

xzcat /var/log/postgres.log.1.xz

Step 2: Backup the data

So data files are located (DSM 7.0 Beta) at /var/service/pgsql. So attached a USB HDD and then copy everything over.

cp -pr /var/service/pgsql /volumeUSB1/[shared folder]

Step 3: Attempt to Start the Service

Stupid me after many attempts, noticed that the service cannot be started due to a fatal error appearing in the logs.

su - postgres

The following start the application inline.

postgres

Or

pgctl start -D /var/service/pgsql

Step 4: Check the Error Logs

Luckly from logs, I spot something. A fatal log. It indicates that it complains that /tmp/synoCalendar cannot be access. So I check and it was indeed missing. (This is strange because I had uninstall the calendar app already.) So I manually create the directory try to start it. Presto it Work.

However trying to install the package it complaint that the pgsql-adapter.service is not available. So since I cannot find the service startup, (there is no synoservice in DSM7.0), I executed the standard Window maneuver. Restart. It worked!