Re: PANIC: block 463 unfound during REDO after out of

Warren Guy wrote:
> Hi everyone
> 
> Was running a VACUUM on a database on a partition which was running out 
> of disk space. During VACUUM the server process died and failed to restart.
> 
> Running PostgreSQL 8.1.4

...
> Jan 11 15:02:39 marshall postgres[73909]: [5-1] FATAL:  the database 
> system is starting up
> Jan 11 15:02:40 marshall postgres[73888]: [12-1] PANIC:  block 463 unfound
> Jan 11 15:02:41 marshall postgres[67977]: [5-1] LOG:  startup process 
> (PID 73888) was terminated by signal 6
> Jan 11 15:02:41 marshall postgres[67977]: [6-1] LOG:  aborting startup 
> due to startup process failure

You say "was running out of disk space" - does that mean it did run out 
of disk space? I don't see the error that caused this, just the results. 
That would suggest to me that something unusual caused this (or you 
clipped the log fragment too far down :-)

In any case, the first thing I'd try is to make your on-disk backups and 
set it up as though it's PITR recovery you're doing. That way you can 
stop the recovery before block 463 causes the failure. Oh, assuming 
you've got the space you need on your partition of course.

HTH
--   Richard Huxton  Archonet Ltd