Failed to restart postgresql.service: Unit postgresql.service is masked

How can I solve this? (Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS)

sudo service postgresql restart
Failed to restart postgresql.service: Unit postgresql.service is masked.

2 Answers

Ubuntu 15.04 and earlier used upstart. Upstart uses the service command to handle services. As of 16.04 Ubuntu is using systemd. Any service commands you use get remapped to systemctl commands. Systemd provides more functionality than upstart, including the ability to mask a service so that it cannot be started. Masking a service (from what I understand) essentially symlinks it to /dev/null. You should be able to unmask and restart the service with the following commands.

systemctl unmask postgresql
systemctl restart postgresql

if you are using Docker. then make sure the container is running. do that by typing Docker ps. if the container is missing but appears in Docker ps -a then just use Docker start