Re: [GENERAL] Restoreing from a Unix TAR backup of data directory...

I'm going to make your day here, but you might not, in fact, have v6.1
databases...they might be newer then that :(

When we were just starting out, we hadn't perfected everything, and, in
some releases, failed up to update the PG_VERSION data :(

Last night, talking with a friend of mine, I clued into the fact that we
do do branches on the CVS repository *d'oh* ... the problem is that I have
pre-6.0 and 6.3+ branches only...its only something we just started
doing...

I'm trying to pull out a v6.3 source tree right now, and will email you
once its available...if I'm right, this *might* help you.  Don't hold your
breath, but its an attempt ...


On Tue, 16 Mar 1999, Jay W. Summet wrote:

> I'm using BSDI 4.0, intel x86:
>
> I have a backup of my /usr/local/pgsql/data directory (and all sub
> dirs) made using the Unix TAR command while the database was not
> active.
>
> At the time, I was using Postgresql version 6.1.  I now need to
> restore from this backup. I've obtained (thanks the the help of
> various people on this mailing list) a copy of PG version 6.1, and PG
> version 6.1.1.
>
> I installed Postgresql on my system, and then did a "tar -xvpf
> backupfilename.tar" command to overwrite the "data" directory with my
> data.  However, this did not allow me to access the data.
>
> Every time I attempt to start a PSQL session, I get the following
> message:
> -----cut-----
> Connection to database 'billing' failed.
> PQexec() -- Request was sent to backend, but backend closed the
> channel before r esponding.  This probably means the backend
> terminated abnormally before or whil e processing the request.
> -----cut----
>
>
> I traced the problem down to the postgres session that the postmaster
> started up, and I ran one on it's own:
> -------cut---------
> fnord:/usr/local/pgsql/bin $ postgres -d9 -o debug.txt
> -D /usr/local/pgsql/data billing
> ---debug info---
>         Quiet =        f
>         Noversion =    f
>         stable    =    f
>         timings   =    f
>         dates     =    Normal
>         bufsize   =    64
>         query echo =   f
>         multiplexed backend? =  f
>         DatabaseName = [billing]
>         ----------------
>
>         InitPostgres()..
> Segmentation fault
> ----cut------
> (Note: At the end of this run, the debug.txt file was empty)
>
> If I install the PG version 6.1 (or 6.1.1) and do a initdb, and then
> attempt to access the default (template1) db, everything works just
> fine. (Instead of a Segmentation fault, I get:
> ------cut----
> POSTGRES backend interactive interface
> $Revision: 1.33 $ $Date: 1997/04/24 03:39:09 $
> ------cut----
> and  I can use the database system without any problems, but
> it doesn't help me get to my backed up data)
>
> I have tried to also issue a  "create database billing" command
> in the template1 database, and THEN overwrite ONLY the
> "/usr/local/pgsql/data/base/billing" dirctory with my backed up data.
>
> In this case, I could use the psql session to connect to the
> "template1" database, but I got the same problem detailed above when
> I tried to connect to the "billing" database.
>
> The PG_VERSION files from my backups say "6.1" as well as the
> PG_VERSION files from the PG 6.1 and PG 6.1.1 installations.
>
>
> So, my questions are:
> a) Does anybody know why my backed up data is causing the postgres
> process to do a seg fault when it tries to read it?
> b) Anybody know how to fix it?
> c) Lacking that ability, is there a way to extract the raw data from
> the backed up database files without using the postgres engine?
>
> Thanks,
> Jay W. Summet
>

Marc G. Fournier                   ICQ#7615664               IRC Nick: Scrappy
Systems Administrator @ hub.org
primary: scrappy@hub.org           secondary: scrappy@{freebsd|postgresql}.org