FATAL: could not access private key file “/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key”: Permission denied

Question

I believe I ended up mixing up permissions at /etc/ssl directories tree as the last modification was made on 18th November and a day after I could not get my PostgreSQL to work.

Answer 1

Only thing that will work if you have changed permissions for /etc/ssl/private

mkdir /etc/ssl/private-copy; mv /etc/ssl/private/* /etc/ssl/private-copy/; rm -r /etc/ssl/private; mv /etc/ssl/private-copy /etc/ssl/private; chmod -R 0700 /etc/ssl/private; chown -R postgres /etc/ssl/private

Copy this whole command (It's a one line code).

If this doesn't work for you, ckeck your postgres user groups by groups postgres and make sure your postgres user have ssl-cert root postgres (Order doesn't matter).

Now lets check your file permissions on ssl/private :

$ ls -la /etc/ssl/
> drwx------   2 postgres root private

If this is not the output change your permissions with sudo chmod -R 700 /etc/ssl/private and for owners chown -R postgres:root /etc/ssl/private

//Now check permissions on ssl-cert-snakeoil.key, 
//which will be inside your **private** directory.
$ ls -la /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key
> -rwx------ 1 postgres root /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key