Why am I unable to install,remove or upgrade packages?

Question

When I wanna do anything with Synaptic or apt-get or stop,start,restart postgresql I receive following error

Setting up postgresql-common (114) ...
 * Starting PostgreSQL 8.4 database server                                       * Insecure directory in $ENV{PATH} while running with -T switch at /usr/bin/pg_ctlcluster line 63.
                                                                         [fail]
invoke-rc.d: initscript postgresql, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing postgresql-common (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 postgresql-common
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

I'm using ubuntu 11.04 . I canceled upgrade to 11.10 last night during upgrade,and changed source.list, then reload package information from Synaptic. Maybe this is related to the issue in some way, however, I changed source.list back to default and reload it again, but, it doesn't solve my problem.

Answer 1

Try:

apt-get --purge remove postgresql\*

It helped me. I had same problem. Command differs with suggestion at the end '\*'.

Answer 2

This is caused due to installation of Postgre SQL was stopped in between. Purge the postgre sql installation and you will be fine.

To purge postgre sql installation, in console type

sudo apt-get remove --purge postgresql

Trying running these commands, it should resolve it.

sudo dpkg --configure -a
sudo apt-get -f install
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade