def read_postmaster_opts(self):
        """returns the list of option names/values from postgres.opts, Empty dict if read failed or no file"""
        result = {}
        try:
            with open(os.path.join(self._data_dir, 'postmaster.opts')) as f:
                data = f.read()
                for opt in data.split('" "'):
                    if '=' in opt and opt.startswith('--'):
                        name, val = opt.split('=', 1)
                        result[name.strip('-')] = val.rstrip('"\n')
        except IOError:
            logger.exception('Error when reading postmaster.opts')
        return result