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I'm trying to make a clean startup script for pgagent
I found one here that use start-stop-daemon :

if start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /var/run/pgagent.pid \
--exec /usr/bin/pgagent "hostaddr=127.0.0.1 dbname=postgres user=postgres \
password=XXXXXXX";then

I wanted to run this under the postgres user, because it's more appropriate and because it allows the command to get the password in the .pgpass file. So, as the start-stop-demon doc says, I added -c postgres:postgres in the call :

if start-stop-daemon -S -q -p /var/run/pgagent.pid -c postgres:postgres \
-x /usr/bin/pgagent "hostaddr=127.0.0.1 dbname=postgres user=postgres";then

But when I test my script with sudo /etc/init.d/pgagent start, I still get the error showing that the .pgpass file is not used at all...

WARNING: Couldn't create the primary connection (attempt 1): 
fe_sendauth: no password supplied
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A quick browse through man start-stop-daemon suggests that you want --chuid postgres. Do you get any error messages? – geirha Mar 7 '11 at 6:56
yes, that's what -c postgres:postgres stand for. The problem is that the underlying process is not using the .pgpass file located in postgres home folder like it should. – Dominique Guardiola Mar 7 '11 at 14:58
That's odd. I made a simple script that just did env > /tmp/env.output, then ran that using a similar line: sudo start-stop-daemon -S -q -c tmpuser:tmpuser -x /usr/local/bin/tmpscript and in /tmp/env.output, the HOME environment variable was set to tmpuser's homedir. – geirha Mar 8 '11 at 15:59
Try adding -l 2 to the args for pgagent for more verbose logging and post back. – ed. Sep 14 '11 at 17:24
sorry , I turned out to use the password in the command line, this was a while ago now – Dominique Guardiola Sep 14 '11 at 20:57
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closed as too localized by jrg♦, Jorge Castro, htorque, RolandiXor♦, Marco Ceppi♦ Nov 7 '11 at 14:49

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