Re: postgres 8.2.9 transaction id wraparound failure

Maria L. Wilson wrote:
> I tried just vacuuming the "postgres" database first.  No luck.  Was
> still unable to startup the server normally.

Did the vacuum actually work?  Note that you need to open the database
you're going to vacuum, on the --single command line.

> Here's is a snipped from the query you suggested....  All the databases
> on this machine look similar.....

So you'll need to vacuum them all ...

> backend> SELECT datname, age(datfrozenxid) FROM pg_database ORDER BY
> age(datfrozenxid) DESC
>  2009-04-20 14:27:52.250 EDT  [10097] [] WARNING:  database "postgres"
> must be vacuumed within 981218 transactions
>  2009-04-20 14:27:52.250 EDT  [10097] [] HINT:  To avoid a database
> shutdown, execute a full-database VACUUM in "postgres".
>     1: datname    (typeid = 19, len = 64, typmod = -1, byval = f)
>     2: age    (typeid = 23, len = 4, typmod = -1, byval = t)
>    ----
>     1: datname = "postgres"    (typeid = 19, len = 64, typmod = -1,
> byval = f)
>     2: age = "2146502429"    (typeid = 23, len = 4, typmod = -1, byval = t)
>    ----
>     1: datname = "ange"    (typeid = 19, len = 64, typmod = -1, byval = f)
>     2: age = "2146502429"    (typeid = 23, len = 4, typmod = -1, byval = t)
>    ----

My guess is that autovacuum is failing to vacuum anything for some
reason.  Maybe it's dying due to an error, which you'd find in the
server log file.

--
Alvaro Herrera                                http://www.CommandPrompt.com/
PostgreSQL Replication, Consulting, Custom Development, 24x7 support