failure with pg_dump

This morning I came in to discover that my nightly pg_dump backup to a
remote server had failed.  Both the server and the client are have
postgres 8.0.1 installed.  Figuring it was just a fluke I ran the dump
again by hand and got the same error:

% pg_dump -h d01-prv -Fc -f mm.22-Mar-2005.dump vkmlm
pg_dump: socket not open
pg_dump: SQL command to dump the contents of table "user_list" failed:
PQendcopy() failed.
pg_dump: Error message from server: socket not open
pg_dump: The command was: COPY public.user_list ( ... list elided for
privacy concerns ... )

the postgres log on the server has this to say:

Mar 22 10:35:00 d01 postgres[35190]: [8-1] LOG:  could not receive data
from client: Operation timed out
Mar 22 10:35:00 d01 postgres[35190]: [9-1] LOG:  unexpected EOF on
client connection


the overnight dump had this error:

pg_dump: socket not open
pg_dump: SQL command to dump the contents of table "user_list" failed:
PQendcopy() failed.
pg_dump: Error message from server: socket not open
pg_dump: The command was: COPY public.user_list ( ... )


Mar 22 03:42:10 d01 postgres[33589]: [6-1] LOG:  could not send data to
client: Broken pipe
Mar 22 03:47:10 d01 postgres[33589]: [7-1] LOG:  duration: 473083.960
ms  statement:
  [ the COPY query ]
Mar 22 03:47:10 d01 postgres[33589]: [8-1] LOG:  could not receive data
from client: Operation timed out
Mar 22 03:47:10 d01 postgres[33589]: [9-1] LOG:  unexpected EOF on
client connection


While poking through the logs for these errors, I'm finding a *lot* of
broken pipe/unexpected EOF errors for this server but for connections
from other hosts as well, running reports.  those hosts still have the
7.4 client libraries.

This is a brand new box (rushed into production after minimal testing
since one other died, so I'm not 100% certain it is stable) running
FreeBSD 5.4-PRERELEASE amd64 on a dual Opteron with 4GB ram and
MegaRAID RAID.

The same config on the old box with Pg 7.4.7 worked flawlessly for
running reports and dumps.  Another issue is that the 8.0 server is
noticeably slower than the 7.4 with identically (translated to 8.0
style) configs.

Any ideas on where to poke around for the pipe problems?


Vivek Khera, Ph.D.
+1-301-869-4449 x806