[Fixed]-Postgresql socket error on OSX 10.7.3 when running Django's syncdb

I had the same problem too: updated osx to 10.7.3 and after I restarted the postgres server I got the same issue when I tried to run $ ./manage.py dbshell that goes through psycopg2, but didn’t have problem connecting to postgres using psql.

To me the problem appears to be related just to “connections on Unix domain socket”, because psycopg2 uses the newly 10.7.3 osx updated postgres library.

I tried to reinstall psycopg2, but nothing was changed.

So, I changed the HOST value on the databases section of my django settings.py, and instead of having an empty string I put 'localhost'.

and it works perfectly!

Eelke ‘s problem was the same as mine.
The quickest fix for this would be to add

export PGHOST=/tmp

an environment variable in your .bashrc/.zshrc/etc
file (depending on which you use).

The best fix would be to set the specific path in your apps config file.

Did a bit of testing on my Mac and I noticed that there are two versions on my system for several commands. One version is in /usr/bin the other is in /Library/PostgreSQL/9.0/bin. The version in /usr/bin is expecting /var/pgsql_socket/.s.PGSQL.5432, the right version for my install expects /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432

The version in /usr/bin is 9.0.5 and it has been installed by Apple.

Unfortunatly I do not know much about django, but my bet is it is either calling a command in the wrong path or it is loading a library from the wrong location.

You can fix the problem by creating a symlink:

 ln -s /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 /var/pgsql_socket/

This did the trick for me in the end…

Change the HOST value in the database dictionary in settings.py to this:

‘HOST’: ‘/tmp’,

Source:
http://jeffammons.net/2011/09/fixing-postgres-on-mac-10-7-tiger-for-django

Reinstalling psycopg2 worked for me

I ran into the same issue just after upgrading to OSX 10.7.3; reinstalling PostgreSQL solved the problem and did not delete my existing data.