Postgres shuts down immediately when started with docker-compose - postgresql

Question

Postgres shuts down immediately when started with docker-compose. The yaml file used is below
version: '2'
services:
postgres:
image: postgres:9.5
container_name: local-postgres9.5
ports:
- "5432:5432"
The log when docker-compose up command is executed
Creating local-postgres9.5
Attaching to local-postgres9.5
local-postgres9.5 | The files belonging to this database system will be owned by user "postgres".
local-postgres9.5 | This user must also own the server process.
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | The database cluster will be initialized with locale "en_US.utf8".
local-postgres9.5 | The default database encoding has accordingly been set to "UTF8".
local-postgres9.5 | The default text search configuration will be set to "english".
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | Data page checksums are disabled.
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | fixing permissions on existing directory /var/lib/postgresql/data ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | creating subdirectories ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | selecting default max_connections ... 100
local-postgres9.5 | selecting default shared_buffers ... 128MB
local-postgres9.5 | selecting dynamic shared memory implementation ... posix
local-postgres9.5 | creating configuration files ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | creating template1 database in /var/lib/postgresql/data/base/1 ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | initializing pg_authid ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | initializing dependencies ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | creating system views ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | loading system objects' descriptions ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | creating collations ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | creating conversions ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | creating dictionaries ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | setting privileges on built-in objects ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | creating information schema ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | loading PL/pgSQL server-side language ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | vacuuming database template1 ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | copying template1 to template0 ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | copying template1 to postgres ... ok
local-postgres9.5 | syncing data to disk ... ok
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | WARNING: enabling "trust" authentication for local connections
local-postgres9.5 | You can change this by editing pg_hba.conf or using the option -A, or
local-postgres9.5 | --auth-local and --auth-host, the next time you run initdb.
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | Success. You can now start the database server using:
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | pg_ctl -D /var/lib/postgresql/data -l logfile start
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | ****************************************************
local-postgres9.5 | WARNING: No password has been set for the database.
local-postgres9.5 | This will allow anyone with access to the
local-postgres9.5 | Postgres port to access your database. In
local-postgres9.5 | Docker's default configuration, this is
local-postgres9.5 | effectively any other container on the same
local-postgres9.5 | system.
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | Use "-e POSTGRES_PASSWORD=password" to set
local-postgres9.5 | it in "docker run".
local-postgres9.5 | ****************************************************
local-postgres9.5 | waiting for server to start....LOG: database system was shut down at 2016-05-16 16:51:54 UTC
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: MultiXact member wraparound protections are now enabled
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: autovacuum launcher started
local-postgres9.5 | done
local-postgres9.5 | server started
local-postgres9.5 | ALTER ROLE
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | /docker-entrypoint.sh: ignoring /docker-entrypoint-initdb.d/*
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: received fast shutdown request
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: aborting any active transactions
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: autovacuum launcher shutting down
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: shutting down
local-postgres9.5 | waiting for server to shut down....LOG: database system is shut down
local-postgres9.5 | done
local-postgres9.5 | server stopped
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | PostgreSQL init process complete; ready for start up.
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: database system was shut down at 2016-05-16 16:51:55 UTC
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: MultiXact member wraparound protections are now enabled
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: database system is ready to accept connections
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: autovacuum launcher started
Postgres seems to work fine when a container is started using the same image with docker run
docker run --name local-postgres9.5 -p 5432:5432 postgres:9.5

Answer 1

If you look at your log output, the following lines appear towards the end:
local-postgres9.5 | server stopped
local-postgres9.5 |
local-postgres9.5 | PostgreSQL init process complete; ready for start up.
Apparently, stopping and restarting the Postgres server is part of the initialisation process. In fact, the second-to-last line says
local-postgres9.5 | LOG: database system is ready to accept connections.

Answer 2

I'm using the same Postgres docker image version of yours (9.5) and I was running into the same problem.
The first time the container is created, Postgres run a series of commands and in the end, it just sends a shutdown signal and the server becomes unresponsive (but it works the second time onwards).
After several trials, I figured that once I tried to connect to the server, before it was ready to accept connections, PostgresDB would shutdown unexpectedly, and the same would happen for any client trying to connect remotely (outside the container).
I came across this error in the following scenario - I have two containers: one for the PostgresDB itself and other containing a Postgres client (psql) that tries to connect to the first container to create some users, databases and run a liquibase script that creates all the schemas.
At first, I was using a loop in my bash script checking if the server was available every 5 seconds, then after the first attempt, Postgres issued a signal to shutdown and becomes unresponsive.
I could get rid of this error by adding a healthcheck in my docker-compose.yml:
Checkout the CHANGE 1 and CHANGE 2 comments below
version: '3.9'
services:
postgres-db:
container_name: ${POSTGRES_HOST}
image: postgres:9.5
restart: always
ports:
- "5432:5432"
command: postgres
expose:
- 5432
environment:
POSTGRES_USER: "${POSTGRES_USER}"
POSTGRES_PASSWORD: "${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}"
POSTGRES_DB: "${POSTGRES_DB}"
#this ENV variable is only required for the healthcheck section - if you don't specify it, the check command will fail stating the root user doesn't exist in posgres
PGUSER: "postgres"
healthcheck:
#CHANGE 1: this command checks if the database is ready, right on the source db server
test: [ "CMD-SHELL", "pg_isready" ]
interval: 5s
timeout: 5s
retries: 5
liquibase:
container_name: liquibase-schema-config
image: company/liquibase
build:
context: ./liquibase
environment:
- PGPASSWORD=${POSTGRES_PASSWORD}
- PGPORT=${POSTGRES_PORT}
- PGHOST=${POSTGRES_HOST}
- PGUSER=${POSTGRES_USER}
- PGDATABASE=${POSTGRES_DB}
- JDBC_URL=jdbc:postgresql://${POSTGRES_HOST}:${POSTGRES_PORT}/
- LIQUIBASE_HOME=${LIQUIBASE_HOME}
depends_on:
#CHANGE 2: it prevents issuing a request while the server is starting to depend on the healthy status of postgres-db
postgres-db:
condition: service_healthy
EDIT: There was another issue preventing Docker from accessing VPN protected sites (and even internet sites) while using Cisco AnyConnect on Linux (it doesn't happen on MacOS). To get around this unwanted behavior I installed openconnect sudo apt install openconnect on my Ubuntu and stopped using AnyConnect.
Hope it helps!

Answer 3

I tried your docker-compose and the service seems running in the container:
root#0afe99de0f0b:/# ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
postgres 1 0.5 0.8 227148 16128 ? Ss 14:42 0:00 postgres
postgres 74 0.0 0.0 227148 1768 ? Ss 14:42 0:00 postgres: checkpointer process
postgres 75 0.0 0.0 227148 1772 ? Ss 14:42 0:00 postgres: writer process
postgres 76 0.0 0.0 227148 1768 ? Ss 14:42 0:00 postgres: wal writer process
postgres 77 0.0 0.1 227576 2720 ? Ss 14:42 0:00 postgres: autovacuum launcher process
postgres 78 0.0 0.0 82132 1888 ? Ss 14:42 0:00 postgres: stats collector process
root 79 2.0 0.0 21820 1984 ? Ss 14:42 0:00 /bin/bash
root 84 0.0 0.0 19092 1296 ? R+ 14:42 0:00 ps aux
Anyway, for my project I use another image for postgresql: https://github.com/sameersbn/docker-postgresql. This one works fine.

Answer 4

Add password under postgres service in docker-compose.yml as given in the screenshot. Thank you.
click to see the screenshot
version: '3'
services:
postgres:
image: postgres
environment:
- POSTGRES_PASSWORD=postgres_password