Recover database from binary files

Diogo Oliveira de Melo
Ciência da Computação
ICMC - USP São Carlos

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Diogo Melo <dmelo87@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:43 PM
Subject: Recover database from binary files
To: pgsql-general@postgresql.org

Hi,

I can't boot the postgres server anymore. I just have access to the files,
like the /var/lib/postgresql/8.3 path, for example. I use debian and
postgresql-8.3 .

I don't have any sql dump. How can I recover my databases with just the
binary files there?

I tried copy the /var/lib/postgresql/8.3 to another a installation of
postgresql-8.3 on another server, but without success.

Diogo Oliveira de Melo
Ciência da Computação
ICMC - USP São Carlos

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 9:43 AM, Diogo Melo <dmelo87@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi,

I can't boot the postgres server anymore. I just have access to the files,
like the /var/lib/postgresql/8.3 path, for example. I use debian and
postgresql-8.3 .

I don't have any sql dump. How can I recover my databases with just the
binary files there?

I tried copy the /var/lib/postgresql/8.3 to another a installation of
postgresql-8.3 on another server, but without success.

How did you copy them? What error(s) did you get?

just tar -zcvf 8.3.tar.gz /mnt/sdf/var/lib/postgresql/8.3/

since i found a way to mount the partition on /mnt/sdf.

first I installed postgres on a virtual machine and then I extracted the
8.3.tar.gz at /var/lib/postgresql . when i try to sh
/etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 start it runs the command instantly but don't
launch anything.

Is there a procedure to recover postgres databases on this occasions??

Diogo Oliveira de Melo
Ciência da Computação
ICMC - USP São Carlos

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com>wrote:

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 9:50 AM, Diogo Melo <dmelo87@gmail.com> wrote:

just tar -zcvf 8.3.tar.gz /mnt/sdf/var/lib/postgresql/8.3/
since i found a way to mount the partition on /mnt/sdf.
first I installed postgres on a virtual machine and then I extracted the
8.3.tar.gz at /var/lib/postgresql . when i try to sh
/etc/init.d/postgresql-8.3 start it runs the command instantly but don't
launch anything.

Is there a procedure to recover postgres databases on this occasions??

Pretty much what you are doing is the procedure. Check permissions on
that folder, look in the postgresql logs, look in the system logs,
etc. It'll likely say something about wrong permissions, but that's
just a guess.

You were right. It was just a matter of set chown -R postgres.postgres
/var/lib/postgresql/8.3

:D :D :D

Case solved :D
Thanks a lot dude :D

Diogo Oliveira de Melo
Ciência da Computação
ICMC - USP São Carlos

On Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 12:52 PM, Scott Marlowe <scott.marlowe@gmail.com>wrote: