Re: Vacuum Full (PG 8.1) - Urgent help needed - Cancel & transaction "liberation"

"Joshua D. Drake" <jd@commandprompt.com> wrote:

> if you actually managed to start two services against the
> same data directory, I hope you have a backup, you can restore
> from.

This is 8.1 under Windows, and he connected to a different database
with each backend.  He got errors writing the WAL files, and it
apparently wouldn't let him start a second VACUUM on the other
database.  I'm hoping that the initial VACUUM (of the big database)
can continue and the WAL problems will cycle out without corrupting
anything.  Is that overly optimistic?

It did occur to me that maybe the manual (and maybe event the
error's hint) should say right up front that once the service stops
a file-based copy of the database should be made (if at all
possible) before proceeding to attempt recovery.  Also, the
"full-database vacuum" terminology seems too likely to be
interpreted as VACUUM FULL for best results.  Perhaps it's worth
changing that to just "database vacuum" or "vacuum of the entire
database"?

-Kevin