How to restart PostgreSQL server on MacOS?

Question

I tried the following and it failed

bash-3.2$ pg_ctl restart
pg_ctl: no database directory specified and environment variable PGDATA unset

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Answer 1

If you used brew you could find the restart(start|stop) instructions by doing a brew info postgresql Some issues that happen stem from the fact I've seen the plist not load, on OS startup, for some reason. I always forgot what to do and this helped.

on my Postgres 9.2 brew recipe it had:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/homebrew.mxcl.postgresql.plist