postgres / postgis randomly stops working on osx mavericks - fix

1_how_to_fix.md

Following advice of Psql: could not connect...:

Running the following command resets PostgreSQL's transaction log, which resolves the problem.

 pg_resetxlog -f /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.3.1/data

you should replace /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.3.1/data with your own pg_datadir (eg., pg_ctl -D $DATADIR start)

error.txt

~  ▶ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.2.2/data start


~  ▶ LOG:  database system was interrupted; last known up at 2013-10-28 13:42:30 EDT
LOG:  could not open file "pg_xlog/000000010000001F000000BB" (log file 31, segment 187): No such file or directory
LOG:  invalid primary checkpoint record
LOG:  could not open file "pg_xlog/000000010000001F000000B8" (log file 31, segment 184): No such file or directory
LOG:  invalid secondary checkpoint record
PANIC:  could not locate a valid checkpoint record
LOG:  startup process (PID 1706) was terminated by signal 6: Abort trap
LOG:  aborting startup due to startup process failure

~  ▶ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.2.2/data -l logfile restart
pg_ctl: PID file "/usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/9.2.2/data/postmaster.pid" does not exist
Is server running?
starting server anyway
server starting
~  ▶ psql
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
	Is the server running locally and accepting
	connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?
~  ▶