The following bug has been logged on the website:
Bug reference: 13350
Logged by: Andrew Gierth
Email address: andrew@tao11.riddles.org.uk
PostgreSQL version: 9.1.16
Operating system: Debian (and probably others)
Description:
The addition of a recursive fsync of the data dir on startup (in the absence
of a clean shutdown) causes startup to fail if the data dir contains
symlinks to files which the postgres user can't write to.
This is the standard configuration for many SSL-enabled setups, including
the standard debian packaging defaults. Accordingly, crash recovery now
ALWAYS fails on such systems without manual intervention.