psql Could Not Connect to Server: No Such File or Directory

Evan Hicks

The Problem

When connecting to Postgres you might see this error: psql: could not connect to server: No such file or directory Is the server running locally and accepting connections on Unix domain socket <some socket>. This happens most often when Postgres’ server daemon process is not running.

The Solution

To troubleshoot this issue, first check to make sure that Postgres is running on the machine you expect it to run. You can use the ps aux command to make sure that the postgres process is currently running. If it’s not, you will need to start Postgres.

Further Reading

If you’re looking to get a deeper understanding of how application monitoring works, take a look at the following articles:

• Support for database Performance Monitoring in Node
• How to mutate data in a system designed for immutable data
• Database integrations with Sentry (docs)