hooks.md

Hooks

The postgres job has two monit processes that you can use to run custom code:

• postgres runs databases.hooks before or after PostgreSQL starts or stops.
• pg_janitor periodically runs the janitor.script and it also takes care of creating roles and database.

If you plan to use these scripts to run custom code, you have to take into consideration that:

• The return code of the database.hooks scripts is not propagated to the monit control job

• The output of the hook scripts is logged into:

  • /var/vcap/sys/log/postgres/hooks.std{out,err}.log
  • /var/vcap/sys/log/postgres/janitor{,.err}.log

• The time spent in databases.hooks.pre-start will delay the start of PostgreSQL. In the same way, the time spent in databases.hooks.pre-stop will delay the stop of PostgreSQL. This would influence an eventual deployment. For this reason we suggest to avoid long running actions in the hooks and to leverage the databases.hooks.timeout property to prevent unexpected delays.

• The following environment variables will be available in the scripts:

  • DATA_DIR: the PostgreSQL data directory (e.g. /var/vcap/store/postgres/postgres-x.x.x)
  • PORT: the PostgreSQL port (e.g. 5432)
  • PACKAGE_DIR: the PostgreSQL binaries directory (e.g. /var/vcap/packages/postgres-x)

  If for example you want to use psql in your hook, you can specify: ${PACKAGE_DIR}/bin/psql -p ${PORT} -U vcap postgres -c "\l"

• In relation to the start up sequence, databases.hooks.post-start and pg_janitor may run concurrently. It implies that databases.hooks.post-start may or may not run before pg_janitor actually creates the roles and databases; if you need a database or a role there, wait that it has been actually created before using it.

• Since monit starts and stops postgres based on the PostgreSQL process id, the databases.hooks.post-stop script may run concurrently with the restart of PostgreSQL. Likewise, the databases.hooks.post-start script may run concurrently with the stop of PostgreSQL.

Using hooks to replace run_on_every_startup property

The run_on_every_startup property allowed to run a list of SQL commands at each postgres start against a given database as vcap. This property has been removed in postgres-release v29. You can migrate from this property to hooks instead.

Replace:

properties:
  databases:
    databases:
    - name: sandbox
      run_on_every_startup:
      - "SQL-QUERY1"
      - "SQL-QUERY2"

with:

databases:
  hooks:
    post_start: |
      #!/bin/bash
      for i in {10..0}; do
        result=$(${PACKAGE_DIR}/bin/psql -p ${PORT} -U vcap postgres -t -P format=unaligned -c "SELECT 1 from pg_database WHERE datname='sandbox'")
        if [ "$result" == "1" ]; then
          break
        fi
        echo "Database sandbox does not exists yet; trying $i more times"
        sleep 1
      done
      if [ "$i" == "0" ]; then
        echo "Time out waiting for the database to be created"
        exit 1
      fi
      ${PACKAGE_DIR}/bin/psql -p ${PORT} -U vcap sandbox -c "SQL-QUERY1"
      ${PACKAGE_DIR}/bin/psql -p ${PORT} -U vcap sandbox -c "SQL-QUERY2"