57P03

At a glance

57P03 is emitted during connection startup when the database has not reached a connection-ready state. Fixed guards distinguish startup, shutdown, recovery, disabled hot standby, and two different not-yet-consistent recovery states.

Meaning

The startup packet is rejected before normal authentication is completed. Every fixed branch uses FATAL, so the attempted connection ends rather than entering a client transaction. The primary alone is not enough for the hot-standby branches: detail distinguishes a disabled feature, a recovery snapshot that is not ready, and recovery that has not reached a consistent state.

Messages

• Startup gate: primary the database system is starting up, FATAL.
• Hot standby disabled: primary the database system is not accepting connections, FATAL; detail Hot standby mode is disabled.
• Recovery snapshot not ready: primary the database system is not yet accepting connections, FATAL; detail Recovery snapshot is not yet ready for hot standby.; hint To enable hot standby, close write transactions with more than %d subtransactions on the primary server.
• Recovery not consistent: primary the database system is not yet accepting connections, FATAL; detail Consistent recovery state has not been yet reached.
• Shutdown gate: primary the database system is shutting down, FATAL.
• Recovery gate: primary the database system is in recovery mode, FATAL.

Diagnosis

Capture primary/detail/hint, the startup phase, hot-standby setting, recovery consistency/snapshot state, server readiness log, and target server role. A repeated not yet accepting response with the snapshot detail points to the primary-side subtransaction condition named by the hint; the consistent-recovery detail points to an earlier recovery gate. Do not treat these as a transaction stuck in INERROR: the connection was refused before a session transaction existed.

Response

Use bounded backoff and wait for the relevant startup, shutdown, or recovery transition. If hot standby is intentionally disabled, remember that hot_standby is a PGC_POSTMASTER setting: change the configuration source owned by the server and restart the server; a SIGHUP/reload cannot activate this setting. If the hint identifies long primary write transactions, resolve that operational cause. Establish a new connection after readiness. There is no transaction on the rejected startup path to roll back; if a prior client operation was disconnected during a transition, verify its business result before replaying it.

Versions

The locked catalogue records this condition from 7.4; that boundary does not prove the exact implementation-introduction version. Fixed source coverage is PostgreSQL 18.6.

Related

57P01, 57P04, 08001

Sources

src/backend/tcop/backend_startup.c#L298-338

src/backend/utils/misc/guc_tables.c#L1895-1903

The structured evidence record records all fixed startup gates and the source/runtime boundary.