Re: Corrupt index

On Thu, 10 Apr 2003, Tom Lane wrote:

> Amir Becher <abecher@yahoo.com> writes:
> > I don't know if this may have something to do with it,
> > but we do backup the data every night using VERITAS
> > Backup Exec. We are not restoring anything, though
> > (the data is backed up to tape). The VERITAS software
> > runs on Windows, but there is an agent that runs on
> > our Linux box where the PostgreSQL data is stored. I
> > should also mention that the backup is running while
> > the database is being modified (we modify the database
> > 24/7).
>
> You're wasting your time making such a backup --- if you ever have to
> use it, it'll be corrupt, because the individual files in the database
> won't be in sync.  But that's not the immediate problem.

Is there any chance that the veritas backup agent on linux is somehow
locking the files as root against read or some other such insanity?  If
so, I'd imagine there being problems of some kind.  But I have no idea if
the veritas backup agent can or does do something like that.

Either way, I'd turn off file system backups for that directory, as they
aren't gonna do any good anyway.

I'm thinking with my rusty old windows NT sysadmin hat here, by the way.