Re: Still big problems with pg_dump!

On Tue, Sep 17, 2002 at 04:25:45PM +0200, Wim wrote:
> >
> >>ERROR:  AllocSetFree: cannot find block containing chunk 4c5ad0
> >>
> >>
> >
> >This is definitely some sort of disk problem.  Either you've written
> >bad data to the disk in some way, or else the disk is corrupted or
> >damaged.
> >
> Postgres is running on solaris 8...
> It is the same database as previous time that has the problem, but not
> the same table.

Someone else suggested that this would not be the error when you have
written bad data to the disk (I thought you could have this if the
controller was flakey and wrote bad data in the past.  Maybe I'm
wrong.  Probably).

> >How did you check?
> >
> >
> with fsck.

That won't help you if the controller is coming and going; you might
find that it works one time, and not another.  Indeed, a disk on its
way out can even pass fsck sometimes, although it's pretty unusual.

> Have backup... I can still SQL COPY to a text file, so that's no problem
> so far.

Well, that's good.  I'd suggest backing up _really often_ until you
know what the problem is, especially since this is production.

> I know, I don't have much spare hardware, and the database had to work
> quickly, it was the
> only solution then.
> Checked the disk, reinstalled the OS and still waiting for a CPU and
> memory upgrade.

Do you have another place to store the database in the meantime -- an
Intel box with a cheap disk, or anything?  At least you'd have
another copy of the database somewhere that way.

A

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