Re: BUG #5725: server couldn't start when installing on liveCD

Hello

Thank you very much.
However, postgresql 8.4 can be installed on ubuntu 9.10 live cd. Why wouldn=
't it work with 10.10 live cd?
I'm aware of RAM considerations, but my database is very light (a few hundr=
ed records), so there is no problem running it on a liveUSB.
Thank you very much in advance for your help.

Vincent

Le 26 oct. 2010 =E0 01:52, Craig Ringer <craig@postnewspapers.com.au> a =E9=
crit :

On 10/26/2010 02:44 AM, VMaury wrote:

2010-10-25 08:45:56 UTC PANIC:  could not open file
"pg_xlog/000000010000000000000000" (log file 0, segment 0): Invalid
argument

This bug has been reported by someone else (in spanish):
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/postgresql-8.4/+bug/658857

However, this install works perfectly once Ubuntu is installed.
Why is there a difference between install and live?
Thank you very much for your help,

The live CD uses a union file system over the squashfs from the CD. I seem =
to remember that the writable part of the union is a tempfs, but I'm not 10=
0% sure of that. Anyway, the union file system and/or the underlying tempfs=
 are probably missing features required for PostgreSQL's operation.

You can probably get it to run by pre-creating the postgresql data director=
y and mounting a real file system on it, without the union with squashfs. A=
 dedicated tempfs might work, so try that. If it doesn't, you'll need some =
writable storage (a partition on the computer's hard disk, an external HDD,=
 even a USB key if you're prepared for horrifyingly bad performance) to put=
 a real file system like ext3 on.

Even if tempfs works, be aware that it uses your system's RAM - and when th=
at runs low, spills to swap space. If there isn't enough RAM and there's no=
 swap space, it'll fail. Of course, the data also goes away on reboot. It's=
 a very bad place to run PostgreSQL for anything but the most utterly trivi=
al toy experimentation.

--
Craig Ringer