Re: FATAL error after a system crash

Feng-Cheng Chang <breeze@alumni.nctu.edu.tw> writes:
> when I try to
> connect to the database using either psql or JDBC, it says
> "FATAL 1: cannot open pg_variable: no such file or directory"
> and terminates the connection.

Well, if that's the only problem, you got (very) lucky.  7.1.* doesn't
actually use pg_variable, but there is still vestigial code in it that
tries to open that file during startup.  All you need is an empty file
of the right name, so try

    touch $PGDATA/global/1264

But I fear that'll just let you get to the next problem :-(.  If Windoze
managed to lose that file, it probably managed to lose other stuff too.
If it does seem to start up okay, I'd recommend trying to do pg_dumpall,
and then initdb and reload if the dump process doesn't show errors.

> P.S.
> My system configuration:
> Win2k server
> cygwin + postgresql 7.1.3

This is not a production-grade setup IMHO.  If you don't want to run
a real OS to put Postgres on top of, you'd better be a lot more
religious about backing up.

            regards, tom lane