cannot find attribute 1 of relation (second occurrence.)

Hi-

We've just seen the following error for a second time since upgrading to
7.2.1-2:

cannot find attribute 1 of relation <tablename>

The first time, Tom Lane helped us by suggesting a reindex of pg_attribute.
I tried this on the second case as well, and it solved the problem.

At this point, I'm concerned because I've never encountered this error
before in about 2 years of postgres use, but now I've seen it twice in the
last two weeks, so I need to figure out why it happened.

Some questions & conjecture:

Has anyone else encountered this problem on 7.2.1-2? The two major recent
changes that I can think of are our upgrade to 7.2 & new hardware. Hardware
seems the likely culprit, but if others have experience similar errors on
7.2, I'd squint more closely at the software.

The first time I encountered this error was on a massive dump file reload.
The second time, the only coincidence I can think of was updating
pg_attribute.atttypmod for several records last night. Could this have
caused my problem?

Any other ideas?

Thanks everyone!

-Nick

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nick Fankhauser  nickf@ontko.com  Phone 1.765.935.4283  Fax 1.765.962.9788
Ray Ontko & Co.     Software Consulting Services     http://www.ontko.com/