Cause of ERROR: could not open relation 1663/856689/856777: Invalid argument?

Wyatt --

We got a spate of similar errors recently; turned out to be a disk was not mounted properly. Once it was reseated all was well. You might also do a RAM check just to make sure that something isn't wonky there.

IIRC, I was told (see the archives of the postgres admin mail list) that this is an errant index, so you might try reindexing the table and see if you get the errors or if they go away.

HTH,

Greg WIlliamson
DBA
GlobeXplorer LLC

-----Original Message-----
From: pgsql-general-owner@postgresql.org on behalf of Wyatt Tellis
Sent: Sat 9/30/2006 9:08 AM
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Cc:
Subject: [GENERAL] Cause of ERROR: could not open relation 1663/856689/856777: Invalid argument?

Hi,

I'm running 8.1.4 on W2K3 R2. I occasionally get errors of the type:

ERROR: could not open relation 1663/856689/856777: Invalid argument

where the last two numbers change. This only seems to happen during
inserts into the largest table in the database (>500,000 rows). What
does this error message mean?

Thanks.

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Greg,

Thanks for the pointers. I couldn't find a reference on the pg-admin
list to this exact error but I've read up a bit on the REINDEX command.
Is there a command or way to determine if an index is corrupt? Is there
anyway to discern this info from the error message itself (i.e. are the
numbers a pointer to a specific index)?

Thanks,

Wyatt

Gregory S. Williamson wrote:

"Wyatt Tellis" <wtellis@radiology.ucsf.edu> writes:

I'm running 8.1.4 on W2K3 R2. I occasionally get errors of the type:
ERROR: could not open relation 1663/856689/856777: Invalid argument

Is there a command or way to determine if an index is corrupt? Is there
anyway to discern this info from the error message itself (i.e. are the
numbers a pointer to a specific index)?

856689 references a database OID (try "select datname from pg_database
where oid = 856689") and then 856777 is a relfilenode (in that database,
do "select relname from pg_class where relfilenode = 856777").

As for what "Invalid argument" on a file open might mean, my personal
advice is to get a real operating system. W2K is by far the weakest
link in your platform.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

"Wyatt Tellis" <wtellis@radiology.ucsf.edu> writes:

I'm running 8.1.4 on W2K3 R2. I occasionally get errors of the type:
ERROR: could not open relation 1663/856689/856777: Invalid argument

Is there a command or way to determine if an index is corrupt? Is there
anyway to discern this info from the error message itself (i.e. are the
numbers a pointer to a specific index)?

856689 references a database OID (try "select datname from pg_database
where oid = 856689") and then 856777 is a relfilenode (in that database,
do "select relname from pg_class where relfilenode = 856777").

As for what "Invalid argument" on a file open might mean, my personal
advice is to get a real operating system. W2K is by far the weakest
link in your platform.

I was able to figure out the table name, but is there a way to figure
out which file caused this error?

-Wyatt

"Wyatt Tellis" <wtellis@radiology.ucsf.edu> writes:

I'm running 8.1.4 on W2K3 R2. I occasionally get errors of the type:
ERROR: could not open relation 1663/856689/856777: Invalid argument

I was able to figure out the table name, but is there a way to figure
out which file caused this error?

Huh? That *is* the filename. See
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/8.1/static/storage.html

regards, tom lane