Postgresql 8.4.1 segfault, backtrace

Dear All,

I've just upgraded from 8.4.0 to 8.4.1 because of a segfault in 8.4, and
we've found that this is still happening repeatedly in 8.4.1. We're in a
  bit of a bind, as this is a production system, and we get segfaults
every few hours.

[It's a testament to how good the postgres crash recovery is that, with
a reasonably small value of checkpoint_segments = 4, recovery happens in
30 seconds, and the warehouse systems seem to continue OK].


The version I'm using is 8.4.1, in the source package provided for
Ubuntu Karmic, compiled by me on a 64-bit server (running Ubuntu Jaunty).

I'm not sufficiently expert to debug it very far, but I wonder whether
the following info from GDB would help one of the hackers here (I've
trimmed out the uninteresting bits):

------------
$ gdb /usr/lib/postgresql/8.4/bin/postgres core.200909030901
GNU gdb 6.8-debian

This GDB was configured as "x86_64-linux-gnu"...

Core was generated by `postgres: fensys fswcs [local] startup
                              '.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
[New process 14965]
#0  RelationCacheInitializePhase2 () at relcache.c:2654
2654                    if (relation->rd_rel->relhasrules &&
relation->rd_rules == NULL)
(gdb) bt
#0  RelationCacheInitializePhase2 () at relcache.c:2654
#1  0x00007f61355a1021 in InitPostgres (in_dbname=0x7f613788c610
"fswcs", dboid=0, username=0x7f6137889450 "fensys", out_dbname=0x0) at
postinit.c:576
#2  0x00007f61354dbcc5 in PostgresMain (argc=4, argv=0x7f6137889480,
username=0x7f6137889450 "fensys") at postgres.c:3334
#3  0x00007f61354aefdd in ServerLoop () at postmaster.c:3447
#4  0x00007f61354afecc in PostmasterMain (argc=5, argv=0x7f6137885140)
at postmaster.c:1040
#5  0x00007f61354568ce in main (argc=5, argv=0x7f6137885140) at main.c:188
(gdb) quit
-------------

A few more bits of info:

The backtrace points to line 2654 in relcache.c, in
   RelationCacheInitializePhase2()

There is a NULL dereference of "relation"

  => needNewCacheFile = false
     criticalRelcachesBuilt = true

=> nothing is happening before it enters the failure code block.


I can give you a core dump if anyone would like to see it, but it's 405
MB after bzipping.

One last observation: a dump and restore of the DB seems to prevent it
crashing for about a day.

Thank you for your help,

Richard