Postgres Exited with code: 1

I had this problem with PostgreSQL installed via homebrew on Mac OS X (10.8.2) recently. I didn’t seen anything immediately google-able.

> psql
psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory
Is the server running   locally and accepting
connections on Unix domain socket "/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432"?

In [Console.app](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Console_(OS_X) I was seeing:

com.apple.launch.peruser.501: (homebrew.mxcl.postgresql[3678]) Exited with code: 1

Not much info there on why it was happening.

I found the answer in /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log

tail /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log
FATAL:  lock file "postmaster.pid" already exists
HINT:  Is another postmaster (PID 322) running in data directory
"/usr/local/var/postgres"?

There was no postgres running:

lunchy status
11:55 ivan
-1  homebrew.mxcl.postgresql

ps auxwww | grep postgres
grep postgres

So, the hint was misleading. The solution was just to delete the process ID file (.pid)

rm /usr/local/var/postgres/postmaster.pid

Then launchd started up postgres automatically. I confirmend this with tail -f server.log