homebrew. Cant start service. get "Bootstrap failed: 5: Input/output error - Postgres - Mac

Solution 1:

The issue is the previous install of postgres was postgres 13, and it created a database under:

/usr/local/var/postgres

which is now incompatible with the version of postgres you're installing, which is version 14.

First question: Do you care about your data?

If not then you can simply delete that folder and attempt to restart the service.

to delete and restart the service do:

rm -rf /usr/local/var/postgres
initdb --locale=C -E UTF8 /usr/local/var/postgres
brew services start postgresql

Otherwise you need to install postgresql@13, and perform a database migration, which can be summed up as follows:

install older postgres, make sure it's stopped

brew install postgresql@13
brew services stop postgresql@13
brew services stop postgres

delete the postgres 13 database created by the installation of postgresql@13

rm -rf /usr/local/var/postgresql@13

move old data to compatible driver folder:

mv /usr/local/var/postgres /usr/local/var/postgresql@13

Now we do the upgrade. First cd to the database folder

cd /usr/local/var

Construct a new blank database, with locale C, encoding of UTF8

initdb --locale=C -E UTF8 -D postgres

Perform the upgrade itself:

pg_upgrade -d postgresql@13 -D postgres -b /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql@13/13.4/bin -B /usr/local/Cellar/postgresql/14.0/bin -v

This should end in success. If it doesn't (e.g. locale/encoding is wrong), then chose the locale and encoding that matches the database.

Finally restart the postgres service:

brew services start postgresql

The problem is really what @Petesh said. But, the resolution for me was simpler.

When you upgrade your postgresql with brew, it logs a success message. One thing registered will be:

To migrate existing data from a previous major version of PostgreSQL run:
  brew postgresql-upgrade-database

So the only thing you need to do is to run the command below:

brew postgresql-upgrade-database

And of course you need to restart the service:

brew services restart postgresql

If you want to make sure it worked, you can run the start command too:

brew services start postgresql