pg_ctl: Server Does Not Shut Down – Force Postgres to Shutdown
You might see the following when issuing the normal stop command to postgres via pg_ctl.
-bash-3.1$ pg_ctl stop
waiting for server to shut down……………………………………………………… failed
pg_ctl: server does not shut down
Sometimes postgres does not want to shutdown by just issuing a pg_ctl stop as the postgres user. User might feel the need to “kill -9” the postgres processes however this could be dangerous for PostgreSQL. Instead of trying to kill the PID follow the directions below in an attempt to stop postgres in an organized fashion.