The stuff in contrib/start-scripts/osx/ does not, as far as I know,
work at all on any recent release of macOS, because SystemStarter
is long gone. I propose replacing it with the attached, which
I've tested on current-vintage Macs.
If anyone's interested in reviewing this, I'll stick it into the
next commitfest.
regards, tom lane
diff --git a/contrib/start-scripts/macos/README b/contrib/start-scripts/macos/README
index ...c4f2d9a .
*** a/contrib/start-scripts/macos/README
--- b/contrib/start-scripts/macos/README
***************
*** 0 ****
--- 1,24 ----
+ To make macOS automatically launch your PostgreSQL server at system start,
+ do the following:
+
+ 1. Edit the postgres-wrapper.sh script and adjust the file path
+ variables at its start to reflect where you have installed Postgres,
+ if that's not /usr/local/pgsql.
+
+ 2. Copy the modified postgres-wrapper.sh script into some suitable
+ installation directory. It can be, but doesn't have to be, where
+ you keep the Postgres executables themselves.
+
+ 3. Edit the org.postgresql.postgres.plist file and adjust its path
+ for postgres-wrapper.sh to match what you did in step 2. Also,
+ if you plan to run the Postgres server under some user name other
+ than "postgres", adjust the UserName parameter value for that.
+
+ 4. Copy the modified org.postgresql.postgres.plist file into
+ /Library/LaunchDaemons/. You must do this as root:
+ sudo cp org.postgresql.postgres.plist /Library/LaunchDaemons
+ because the file will be ignored if it is not root-owned.
+
+ At this point a reboot should launch the server. But if you want
+ to test it without rebooting, you can do
+ sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.postgresql.postgres.plist
diff --git a/contrib/start-scripts/macos/org.postgresql.postgres.plist b/contrib/start-scripts/macos/org.postgresql.postgres.plist
index ...fdbd74f .
*** a/contrib/start-scripts/macos/org.postgresql.postgres.plist
--- b/contrib/start-scripts/macos/org.postgresql.postgres.plist
***************
*** 0 ****
--- 1,17 ----
+ <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+ <!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd";>
+ <plist version="1.0">
+ <dict>
+ <key>Label</key>
+ <string>org.postgresql.postgres</string>
+ <key>ProgramArguments</key>
+ <array>
+ <string>/bin/sh</string>
+ <string>/usr/local/pgsql/bin/postgres-wrapper.sh</string>
+ </array>
+ <key>UserName</key>
+ <string>postgres</string>
+ <key>KeepAlive</key>
+ <true/>
+ </dict>
+ </plist>
diff --git a/contrib/start-scripts/macos/postgres-wrapper.sh b/contrib/start-scripts/macos/postgres-wrapper.sh
index ...3a4ebda .
*** a/contrib/start-scripts/macos/postgres-wrapper.sh
--- b/contrib/start-scripts/macos/postgres-wrapper.sh
***************
*** 0 ****
--- 1,25 ----
+ #!/bin/sh
+
+ # PostgreSQL server start script (launched by org.postgresql.postgres.plist)
+
+ # edit these as needed:
+
+ # directory containing postgres executable:
+ PGBINDIR="/usr/local/pgsql/bin"
+ # data directory:
+ PGDATA="/usr/local/pgsql/data"
+ # file to receive postmaster's initial log messages:
+ PGLOGFILE="${PGDATA}/pgstart.log"
+
+ # (it's recommendable to enable the Postgres logging_collector feature
+ # so that PGLOGFILE doesn't grow without bound)
+
+
+ # set umask to ensure PGLOGFILE is not created world-readable
+ umask 077
+
+ # wait for networking to be up (else server may not bind to desired ports)
+ /usr/sbin/ipconfig waitall
+
+ # and launch the server
+ exec "$PGBINDIR"/postgres -D "$PGDATA" >>"$PGLOGFILE" 2>&1
