fail to start postgresql when used with vagrant

Question

Trying to start postgresql on a Virtualbox VM managed by Vagrant I have the following error:

LOG:  could not link file "pg_xlog/xlogtemp.29" to "pg_xlog/000000010000000000000001" (initialization of log file): Operation not permitted
FATAL:  could not open file "pg_xlog/000000010000000000000001": No such file or directory

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score 5 · Accepted Answer · edited Nov 26 '17 at 00:06

5

This happens when the data directory of postgresql is in a Vagrant shared folder (/vagrant for instance), and the Vagrant host is Windows. In that case permissions cannot be set the unix way.

Move that folder to another location (the home dir of the vagrant user for instance) and postgresql will start.

Solution found at: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-development-kit/issues/20

edited Nov 26 '17 at 00:06

womble

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answered Jun 18 '15 at 13:10

Thomasleveil

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This solution works for me on Windows 10. – kapilsdv Sep 05 '17 at 07:04
had to move shared folders created for multiple machines inside my OracleVM VirtualBox for each virtual machine, and it worked. Thank you. – Andrii Plotnikov Feb 28 '19 at 00:37

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 10 '15 at 05:21

The underlying cause for this is that vboxsf does not support filesystem links (neither hard nor symbolic). You can reproduce the issue by mounting a host folder inside a VirtualBox guest and trying to do the following: ln /path/to/mounted/share/existingfile.txt /some/path/link-to-file.txt

for example (with /var/data mounted as a vboxsf share) jim@a55a005fc5a5:/~ ln /var/data/foo.txt ~/data/link-to-foo ln: failed to create hard link ‘/users/jim/data/link-to-foo’ => ‘/var/data/foo.txt’: Operation not permitted

There are numerous tickets for this at virtualbox.org (#818, #10085) but seeing as they go back 7 years, it might be another while yet before it's fixed!

fail to start postgresql when used with vagrant

2 Answers2