Re: Vacuum return codes (vacuum as db integrity check?)

"Stephane Charette" <stephanecharette@telus.net> writes:
> 1) Where is the postmaster log kept?  I've looked, but I'm cannot seem
> to find it.

I'm talking about the postmaster's stderr output.  Look to see what your
postmaster startup script does with stderr ... if it routes it to
/dev/null, you'll need to change the script.

> 2) Does a non-zero return value from vacuumdb necessarily mean the
> database is corrupted?

Impossible to tell without seeing the error messages.

> 5) Is vacuumdb the "right" thing to do for a database integrity check?

Not particularly.  I'd consider a successful pg_dumpall run to be a more
thorough check (or at least an equally good, and quite different, one).

> 7) When power fails on a box that is running a 7.2 PostgreSQL database,
> do *you* ever find that the database is corrupt when the box comes back
> up?

IIRC, there were some problems with sequences going backwards after a
crash in 7.2.  If you are on 7.2.x for x < 3, you are running a version
with serious known bugs; you should update before complaining too much
...

            regards, tom lane