How to check status of PostgreSQL server Mac OS X

The simplest way to to check running processes:

ps auxwww | grep postgres

And look for a command that looks something like this (your version may not be 8.3):

/Library/PostgreSQL/8.3/bin/postgres -D /Library/PostgreSQL/8.3/data

To start the server, execute something like this:

/Library/PostgreSQL/8.3/bin/pg_ctl start -D /Library/PostgreSQL/8.3/data -l postgres.log