Re: device full ---> postgres will not start

On Fri, 24 Oct 2003, Duffy House wrote:

> Hello:
>
> It looks like I got caught sleeping.
>
> I am running Postgresql 7.2 under Red Hat 7.3.
> Postgresql failed today.  When I tried to restart it, I got a message
> stating that the device is full.
> I used df to confirm that /var where postgres reside is full.  /var is on a
> 4 Gig device.
> Postgresql is the only application on this machine.
>
> Please note, the backup of the database from the prior day, is 45 Meg
> zipped.
> I do not know how the database could be soaking up a 4 Gig device.
>
> Questions:
>
> How can I recover from this situation?
>
> If postgres will not start how can I restore the database from the prior
> day?
>
> When I run a backup does postgres truncate its logs?
>
> please keep it simple, I have about 1 hours admin experience with postgres.
>
> thanks in advance.

It sounds like either you've never run vacuum, or you've had a few threads
holding transactions open for a very long time.

Easiest way to recover:  Make a bigger partition, cp everything there, and
point the postmaster at that partition to startup.  Then vacuum etc... and
copy it all back over the original partition.  Then make sure you're
running the latest and greatest (at least 7.2.4, prefereable 7.3.4) and
look up the autovacuum daemon to make sure this never happens again.  If
you installed from source, it's in the contrib/pg_autovacuum directory,
just cd in there as root, and 'make;make install' and it's installed.