pgpool-II doesn't execute my failover script
I had issues with getting the script to run as well. But eventually figured it out.

A few high level steps to keep in mind. 

In your failover script redirect results to a log file like:

ssh -T postgres@$SLAVE1 "touch /tmp/postgresql.trigger.5432" &gt; /tmp/failover.log 2&gt;&amp;1


This might help you identify why it is failing.

However, here is a high level overview of how I managed to get the failover  script running:


install failover script on pgpool server
pgpool is running under root. So...
as user root run ssh-keygen -t rsa on the pgpool server and cat id_rsa.pub and &gt;&gt; to authorized_keys on the db servers


Doing so will allow the script to run without interactive authentication, which is what my problem was.