Urgent Help required

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:26 AM, Neha Patel <npatel@nevi-soft.com> wrote:

Hi,

We are running with postgres sql 7.3.2. We were trying to create an index
on a big table. The create index command ran for nearly 5 hours at which
point we decided to interrupt it. Since this was interrupted, any
operations attempted on the table on which the index was being created
gives following error in pgsql log:

upgrade to whatever is the newest 7.3.X version now first, and also - 7.3 is
an ancient history - in terms of age, so you might wanna look at upgrading
to 8.3 or newer soon.

LOG: all server processes terminated; reinitializing shared memory and
semaphor

es

LOG: database system was interrupted at 2009-10-16 10:44:54 BST

LOG: checkpoint record is at 150/71A0C0CC

LOG: redo record is at 150/71A0C0CC; undo record is at 0/0; shutdown TRUE

LOG: next transaction id: 1757299460; next oid: 43508941

LOG: database system was not properly shut down; automatic recovery in
progress

LOG: ReadRecord: record with zero length at 150/71A0C10C

LOG: redo is not required

LOG: database system is ready

Any idea what this means and what we need to do to resolve access to this
table again? We can see the next oid number increases over time. Access to
all other tables in the database is fine. Any help would be greatly
appreciated.

Many Thanks

*Neha.*

--
GJ

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:26:40AM +0100, Neha Patel wrote:

Hi,

We are running with postgres sql 7.3.2.

Whatever you thought your most urgent priority was, it's actually
getting your database off of a major version of PostgreSQL, 7.3, whose
end-of-life was well over a year ago.

Your second most urgent priority is creating an upgrade strategy and
integrating it into your development and deployment processes.

I hope you have good backups.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

Hi David,

Many thanks for your reply. After good 10 hours of work we managed to
restore from a backup.

Regards
Neha>

-----Original Message-----
From: David Fetter [mailto:david@fetter.org]
Sent: 16 October 2009 17:28
To: Neha Patel
Cc: pgsql-general@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Urgent Help required

On Fri, Oct 16, 2009 at 11:26:40AM +0100, Neha Patel wrote:

Hi,

We are running with postgres sql 7.3.2.

Whatever you thought your most urgent priority was, it's actually
getting your database off of a major version of PostgreSQL, 7.3, whose
end-of-life was well over a year ago.

Your second most urgent priority is creating an upgrade strategy and
integrating it into your development and deployment processes.

I hope you have good backups.

Cheers,
David.
--
David Fetter <david@fetter.org> http://fetter.org/
Phone: +1 415 235 3778 AIM: dfetter666 Yahoo!: dfetter
Skype: davidfetter XMPP: david.fetter@gmail.com

Remember to vote!
Consider donating to Postgres: http://www.postgresql.org/about/donate

Neha Patel wrote:

Hi,

We are running with postgres sql 7.3.2. We were trying to...

well, right off the bat, thats a -really- old version. Release notes
say February 2003. 7.3 was updated to 7.3.21, and we're currently on
8.4 (while still supporting 8.3, 8.2, 8.1, and 7.4). There were a LOT
of fixes between 7.3.2 and 7.3.21, see the release notes for each
version in between...
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/static/release.html

On Fri, 2009-10-16 at 11:26 +0100, Neha Patel wrote:

We are running with postgres sql 7.3.2. We were trying to create an
index on a big table. The create index command ran for nearly 5 hours
at which point we decided to interrupt it. Since this was interrupted,
any operations attempted on the table on which the index was being
created gives following error in pgsql log:

LOG: all server processes terminated; reinitializing shared memory and
semaphor

1. Shut down postgresql and make a full filesystem copy of the PGDATA
directory. This will ensure that anything else you do won't leave you in
a worse position.

2. Upgrade to the latest version of postgresql 7.3, which is 7.3.21

3. Start up again

4. Try to fix the problem:
a. see if there are any indexes on the table
b. if so, drop them
c. try to get a good logical backup using pg_dump. You may want to
disable index scans by using "SET enable_indexscan = f;".
d. If that doesn't work, you may have catalog corruption. Examine the
catalogs (documented here:
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.3/static/catalogs.html ), and look
entries related to your table in pg_class and pg_index, and see if
anything looks wrong.
e. start from a fresh install and restore using the logical backup

5. Upgrade all data to a recent version of postgresql. You're on a
really ancient version that has fallen out of official support. This may
require several upgrade steps, but you should get upgraded to 8.3.8 or
8.4.1. A lot of bugs have been fixed, and as long as you are on 7.3, you
will still be at serious risk.

Regards,
Jeff Davis

Hmm would this be a bad time to ask for PostGres 1.0 support?