Centos 7 environment variables for Postgres servic

Question

Recently I had the problem of starting a postgresql service with custom PGDATA path. It tried to look in the default data directory (/var/lib/pgsql/9.3/data/) which was not initialized and therefore triggered these errors. It appears the problem is that the service starter on Centos 7 strips all the environment variables, including PGDATA.

Interesting thread on the issue

Is there a way to configure

service postgresql-9.3 start

to use custom environment variables? Are there configuration files for services where these variables have to be defined?

Thank you in advance!

Answer 1

OK, I got a solution that worked for me.

nano /etc/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service 

with the contents copied over from /usr/lib/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service and PGDATA variable changed. Then

systemctl daemon-reload

And then I started the service normally and it worked fine. The trick was making changes to this service configuration file.

Answer 2

Thanks for the above answer, we just ran into this change today. You can also keep the default settings and only override the PGDATA variable by putting the following in /etc/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service:

# Include the default config:
.include /lib/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service

[Service]
Environment=PGDATA=<your path here>/pgsql/9.3/data

This removes the need to reintegrate changes in /usr/lib/systemd/system/postgresql-9.3.service back to your local copy.