Ok. I have been trying to solve this problem for several days. I installed, uninstalled, and reinstalled Postgresql 3 times. I followed precisely the instructions in this forum: https://dba.stackexchange.com/questions/42048/cant-connect-to-the-postgres-server-ls-tmp-s-pgsql-5432-no-such-file-or-dir
I found this solution in many forums, so I tried to run:
$ mkdir /var/pgsql_socket/
$ sudo mkdir /var/pgsql_socket/
$ ln -s /private/tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432 /var/pgsql_socket/
But this didn't work. When I try to start the server it still says there is another one running and then proceeds to fail every time I try to create a database or type "psql"
I then tried to run the following in order to change the path of the commands from OS X's builtin version of postgres to my version and it seemed to work:
$ cd /usr/local/bin
$ rm postgres
$ ln -s /Library/PostgreSQL/9.2/bin/postgres postgres
$ rm psql
$ ln -s /Library/PostgreSQL/9.2/bin/psql psql
$ rm pg_ctl
$ ln -s /Library/PostgreSQL/9.2/bin/pg_ctl pg_ctl
So then I ran the following to create a user for postgres:
$ sudo -u postgres createuser --superuser $Sarah
$ sudo -u postgres createuser --superuser user_sarah
$ sudo -u postgres psql postgres
But it kept saying "unknown user postgres" I then tried to install the Ruby pg gem, but that also failed, saying there was a problem with necessary libraries.
I have saved a text file of everything I tried to do in the terminal. Let me know if I should post that. Thanks.
update:
When I try to run this:
$ pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres -l /usr/local/var/postgres/server.log start
I get this:
-bash: /usr/local/bin/pg_ctl: No such file or directory
Which is different from a lot of other errors that I have seen posted on this problem.