LinuxQuestions.org - Starting up a service (Postgres) on boot

Hi there.

I'm using Mandrake 8.0, and lately I installed postgresql 7.4.2, cause the version mandrake had was 7.2.2.

Everything works fine, I run psql normally. I'm using another program, RQL to query RDF that are stored in postgres. That works too.

The problem came up when I tried to use a Java API to do that work inside a java program. I get error messages which say that I can't connect to the database.

I'm not sure that this is the reason, but here's what I found out. First, by upgrading to postgres 7.4.2, the service doesn't start up with the operating system. So, I have to do this:

su
su - postgres
postmaster ..........

every time, to start up the service. So far so good, cause everything works after that, except from the Java API.

I checked in Mandrake Control Center the services, and even after I start up postgres manually, it says that postgres isn't running. Not only this, but it's set to start on boot (which it doesn't) and the buttons 'START' and 'STOP' do nothing. They always print error messages like: "Couldn't start service" or "Couldn't stop service", no matter if I have started it manually, or stopped it.

Now, since everything in installing postgres went fine, and RQL installation fine too, I suppose that the API failure has something to do with that. It doesn't recognize that postgres is running (Don't know why). I get that feeling, cause I get the same exception messages, no matter if postgres is up (manually by me) or down.

Oh, I should say that before I upgraded to postgres 7.4.2, the previous version did start up on boot.

How can I make postgres start up on boot? And I hope that this is the reason why the link to the database doesn't work.

Thank you for your time,
Tony