[postgis-users] Sudden failure in client connection

[myunghwa Hwang]

Hello, List!

I have beening using Postgresql 8.13 with Postgis1.1.2 on Mac OS X  
Server.
And I'm not good at db administration.
To use Postgresql db for GATE, a text mining tool,
I changed some setting of postgresql.conf two weeks ago.
Before all settings were defaults, and client connection had no problem.
What changed in postgresql.conf is the size of shared_buffers and  
work_mem.
I increased their sizes, but forgot to reload the changed settings a  
lot.
Just after the change, there was no problem, since I guess I didn't  
reload the settings.
Soon I needed to reboot the OS because of some software and system  
upgrades from Apple.
I guess when rebooting the server postgres crashed because of the  
changed setting.
I couldn't connect to db server, so I restarted the postgres by using  
pg_ctl.
Then it showed the setting were wrong, I recovered all settings to  
the previous values.
And restarting worked, so I could connect db locally.
But client connection is not working. I didn't change anything  
related to TCP/IP connection.
Port 5432 was manually added, and in postgresql.conf I explicitly set  
to allow the server to listen all connections through 5432 port.
Of course, I reloaded all the settings again,
but still client connection is not working.
So, I decided to move into new version of PostgreSQL and PostGIS, and  
dumped the whole db.
But I want to know why this happens.
Anybody has some ideas about this trouble?

from Myunghwa Hwang