Re: i'm really desperate: invalid memory alloc request

Janning Vygen wrote:
> Hi Richard,
>
> i feared all db gurus are asleep at the moment.

They are, that's why you've got me :-)

> Am Freitag, 1. Oktober 2004 10:56 schrieb Richard Huxton:
>
>>PS - your next mail mentions sig11 which usually implies hardware
>>problems, so don't forget to test the machine thoroughly once this is over.
>
> You saved my life!! Nothing less!
>
> This was a great help cause i never thought that it could be a hardware
> problem. I took a dump from last night and tried to recover on the original
> machine. it didnt work as i wrote. but when i tried to install it on another
> machine it just worked fine.
>
> So everything is up and running.
>
> I still have all the corrupt files in place and now  i try to determine what
> went wrong.
>
> As it is obviously a hardware problem, my question is now: how can i check my
> hardware (disk)?
>
> How can i get informed next time when things are going wrong?

Well, it might be memory too. You probably want to run memtest86 for a
day or two. Bonnie++ is disk performance rather than testing, but will
stress the system.
   http://www.linuxtested.com/linux_tools.html

Many modern drives offer SMART disk monitoring - google for tools to
display the relevant statistics.

> Ok i will come up with a lot of questions as soon as i had another coffee
> because i never want to feel so helpless again.
>
> There really should be a section in the manual like "desaster recovery" which
> shows some tricks and methods.

It doesn't happen often enough to warrant a chapter, but someone should
write something step-by-step.

>>>pg version is 7.4.2
>>
>>Download 7.4.5 - that's got the latest bugfixes in it.
>
> i will as soon as my nerves are cooling down again :-)

Nice to be able to stop screaming, isn't it ;-)

--
   Richard Huxton
   Archonet Ltd