The PostgreSQL server failed to start.

[DedMoroz]

I'm getting this error message every time I run updates. Any way to fix this? Thanks!

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of postgresql:
postgresql depends on postgresql-8.4; however:
Package postgresql-8.4 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing postgresql (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Processing triggers for libc-bin ...
ldconfig deferred processing now taking place
Errors were encountered while processing:
postgresql-8.4
postgresql

Also this...

An error occurred

The following details are provided:

E: postgresql-8.4: subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
E: postgresql: dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

[DedMoroz]

And more...

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
geoclue-localnet geoclue telepathy-salut wine1.2 libxmu-headers
ttf-tahoma-replacement libsqlite0-dev libtelepathy-farsight0
libtorrent-rasterbar5 geoclue-manual libxmu-dev geoclue-hostip
telepathy-mission-control-5 ttf-symbol-replacement telepathy-gabble
wine1.2-gecko libchamplain-0.4-0 libchamplain-gtk-0.4-0 liblcms1-dev
libpq-dev libmpg123-0 libmng-dev miro-data geoclue-yahoo python-libtorrent
empathy-common python-indicate
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.
2 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0B of additional disk space will be used.
Setting up postgresql-8.4 (8.4.2-0ubuntu9.10) ...
* Starting PostgreSQL 8.4 database server * The PostgreSQL server failed to start. Please check the log output:
2010-02-12 09:43:48 PST LOG: authentication option not in name=value format: sameuser

2010-02-12 09:43:48 PST CONTEXT: line 74 of configuration file "/etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf"
2010-02-12 09:43:48 PST FATAL: could not load pg_hba.conf
[fail]
invoke-rc.d: initscript postgresql-8.4, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing postgresql-8.4 (--configure):
subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of postgresql:
postgresql depends on postgresql-8.4; however:
Package postgresql-8.4 is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing postgresql (--configure):
dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
No apport report written because the error message indicates its a followup error from a previous failure.
Errors were encountered while processing:
postgresql-8.4
postgresql
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

Im looking into the error codes as the guy here did (who solved the problem)...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1363117

[DedMoroz]

Unfortunately, I cant seem to figure out how he solved the problem as I know nothing about PostgreSQL!

[DedMoroz]

Still no luck on this one either. Ive contacted the author of the other thread with the same problem, but in a few weeks have yet to receive a reply. Would anyone have any insight into fixing this? Its quite annoying and every time I do an update this really slows things down.

Thanks for ANY help!

[DedMoroz]

Ive check Ubuntu's page regarding postgresql and checked every dependency to see if that was a prob. I have them all.

[DedMoroz]

Problem solved thanks to the Ubuntu IRC team.

I did this:

sudo apt-get remove --purge postgresql-8.4

then checked to see if pg_hba.conf still existed (it didnt)...

sudo gedit /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf

then went ahead and reinstalled postgresql via synaptic manager.

[slevinfcross]

Problem solved thanks to the Ubuntu IRC team.

I did this:

sudo apt-get remove --purge postgresql-8.4

then checked to see if pg_hba.conf still existed (it didnt)...

sudo gedit /etc/postgresql/8.4/main/pg_hba.conf

then went ahead and reinstalled postgresql via synaptic manager.

Thank you very much. This helped me as well