Re: PostgreSQL 8.1.0 catalog corruption

Bob Ippolito <bob@redivi.com> writes:
> The attributes look like the names of all the columns in the table,  
> and reindexing didn't help.

So at this point it seems that the pg_class row disappeared, but there
probably wasn't any actual DROP operation --- you'd think at least some
of those other entries would have been deleted by a DROP.

My next guess is that the pg_class row simply got clobbered somehow,
eg its xmin field got set to something ridiculous.  The only way I can
think of to investigate that is to dump out the contents of pg_class
with pg_filedump --- are you game for that?  If so, get the right
version of pg_filedump from 
http://sources.redhat.com/rhdb/utilities.html
and run it with the -i -f options (usually produces the most helpful
output, in my experience).
        regards, tom lane