Bristol City's win was a valuable one for their promotion campaign, but it hardly left them bushy-tailed.
They had most of the possession against a mediocre Peterborough side but had to rely on Mark Robins' 12th minute strike for their19th League win.
He moved on to Lee Peacock's downward header from Mickey Bell's left-wing cross for a rather untidy finish which still brought him the fourth goal of his loan spell from Rotherham.
Before he scored City had already passed up one other golden opportunity, one of three Peacock might have had, but it then took a brilliant stop by Mark Tyler to deny the Robins a second goal.
But there wasn't a sense of urgency to City's game and for the rest of the opening half Tyler was made only to field two long-range shots.
Posh in fact shaped to pull back the deficit with two free-kicks just before the break. Skipper Sagi Burton curled the first just over the bar, but was wayward with the second.
As a match this had all the intensity of a training session until Brian Tinnion arrived for City early in the second half.
Posh boss Barry Fry reacted with a double substitution and finally ended using his full quota of subs when he sent on Gavin Strachan, signed on Friday from Coventry.
The action had swung Fry's way leading up to the break and now on 63 minutes Steve Phillips in the home goal had to conjure up a fine reaction stop to deny Andy Clarke an equaliser.
The ball had been played into him from the right by Adam Newton and two minutes later Newton ran in to win Peterborough's only corner.
A rare mistake by Bell also threatened to undo City but he recovered to clear off the line as a slowly moving prod by Clarke homed in.
Peacock now 17 games without a goal was replaced in City's attack by Peter Beadle and tiring Robins gave way to Christian Roberts without any noticeable improvement.
City's leading scorer Scott Murray saw little of the ball but with the game in added-on time made his most incisive run.
He found Tinnion well placed to the left of goal, but the veteran midfielder rolled his shot wide of the far post.
City manager Danny Wilson said: "We dominated the first half but were a little too comfortable with ourselves. That disappointed me because with all our possession we should have had more goals." Peterborough manager Barry Fry said: "City were too good for us, we hardly deserved to be on the same pitch."