Alternatively, instead of SSHing into your service, you can set the start command of your postgres service to: bash -c "chown postgres:postgres /var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key && chmod 600 /var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key", and redeploy. once the container starts and runs the start command, you can remove it and redeploy again.

This error specifically points to a filesystem ownership/permissions problem on the SSL private key rather than direct database corruption.

PostgreSQL intentionally refuses to start if:

• the private key owner is incorrect
• or the permissions are considered insecure

So the current logs suggest the startup is aborting during PostgreSQL security checks, not because the database files themselves are necessarily damaged.

At this stage, there’s no indication that wiping the volume is required.

The Railway team recommendation to temporarily regain shell access and fix ownership/permissions on:

/var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key

is technically the correct next recovery step.

Please do not wipe the volume yet. This error does not indicate that the Postgres data itself is corrupted. It means Postgres is refusing to start because the SSL private key file has the wrong owner/permissions:

/var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key

Postgres requires server.key to be owned by the database user, or by root, with restrictive permissions.

The fix should be to repair ownership/permissions on the existing volume, not delete it.

I would try this recovery path:

1. First, create a manual backup/snapshot of the Railway volume if the Backups tab is available.
2. Do not wipe or recreate the volume.
3. If you can run the container as root, set this env var temporarily:

RAILWAY_RUN_UID=0

Then redeploy and see if the Postgres image/entrypoint repairs the ownership.

1. If it still does not start, the volume needs a one-time permission repair on the mounted filesystem:

chown postgres:postgres /var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key
chmod 600 /var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key

or, if Railway’s image expects root-owned certs:

chown root:root /var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key
chmod 640 /var/lib/postgresql/data/certs/server.key

1. After that, restart the Postgres service.

If Railway does not provide a way for me to shell into the failed database container, I need Railway support/staff to run the permission repair on the mounted volume or provide a safe recovery shell. The important part is: the data volume should be preserved. This should be recoverable without deleting the database data.

THANNKS!!!!!!!!!

Thanks to all the replies helping me with my issue, I connected through ssh, and runned the command and managed to re-start the db.

I still have a question, was this related to the outage and problems with google cloud? was this my fault? how could I prevent this from happening again?

Again, thanks!

Glad you got it fixed! To answer your questions: this may have been related to the May 19 GCP outage, which caused abrupt shutdowns that could corrupt file permissions on volumes. It wasn't anything you did.

To prevent it in the future, enabling volume backups would give you a restore point, and Point-in-Time Recovery would give you continuous protection.